“Wild!” It’s the first word I uttered as I saw the morning news talk about us. Even though the anchors didn’t mention us by name, they were talking about “Mamdani influencers.” Intentional scare quotes.

Funny because a year ago, I wasn’t even sure of whether Internet visibility made sense to me anymore. I hadn’t received a check from my postdoc in months. The federal government had made it more perilous to invite folks like me, so the speaking engagements had almost vanished. I was in the liminal space between my dissertation and my math book manuscript. EduColor just got a huge grant in partnership with a great team, but other foundations closed their gates. I made public appearances and kept building on my cultural capital, but, yes, the math was not mathing.

Now, a year later, my face is in the Columbia Journalism Review, then the New York Post, then the New York Times. Not coincidentally, the morning news asked for transparency from us without asking us.

Surely, that’s their right, but as a veteran blogger, I’ve had a platform in which I could speak for myself. Those who work with me know transparency has never been an issue with me. But vulnerability and integrity take precedence over all else. I took a more satirical approach to the barrage of messages and articles about “us,” but I hope my writing moves the conversation forward and better. Neither the mayor nor his detractors worried me per se. To wit, many of his dissidents don’t need prompting to send me vitriol anyways.

I worried about you, folks who love and support me. What follows is part of how we got here and hopefully what comes next.

It starts with an e-mail from a researcher who wanted to investigate the role of content creators who worked with the local government. Ostensibly, the focus was on the utility of influencers to reach audiences about city services, especially for people who might not otherwise get this information. I gladly took the interview in the interest of elevating this important function. As a recently graduated Columbia researcher, I understood the importance of contributing to the knowledge base about this dynamic field.

As someone who was part of the independent collective Creators for Zohran, I thought the pivot towards sharing what the city would do under a Mamdani administration mattered. This also meant I had an opportunity to hold this administration accountable when I didn’t see sure steps in the right direction, especially on education. Regardless of how each person in the collective feels about Zohran Mamdani as a person, we understand the politician and mayor should hear our criticisms well.

So when I finished the interview, I didn’t ruminate on it. I have nothing to hide. But then I got a request from a reporter at the New York Times for an interview as well. That, too, felt boring and academic and rightly so. But suddenly, I was getting e-mails from both about a Signal chat. I’m sorry, what? Of all the things to focus on, suddenly, the work of hundreds of creators generating millions of views and interest in an innovative approach to governance boiled down to a group chat. Suddenly, it’s about a young Muslim mayor dirty-dealing with twenty-somethings to control and overwhelm the narrative.

Worse still, the articles I read and interviews I heard obfuscated budget line items for city departments to work with content creators with us actually getting paid. In those interviews, I clearly said: “I don’t get paid and I rather not get paid because when I need to hold the mayor accountable, I’d like to do just that.” That wasn’t clear enough, though. The Post inserts a bunch of insinuations for its audience about me and my colleagues. The Times puts an uncredited clip of my video, later fixed at my behest.

And now all these journalists have something to say.

But ironically, the video they clipped from my Instagram shows me dapping up the mayor. That hook generated 9K views, 350 likes, and a lot of DMS. The subsequent video where Mamdani shared his top five rappers 97.5K views, 1.2K likes, and 225 shares. I released the second video on February 27th, 2026 and I didn’t any other journalist ask a rapper turned mayor perhaps the most prominent question in hip-hop culture. His Top 5 even reached Lupe Fiasco, which then made national music news (Complex, USA Today, etc.).

People love to hear that. But here’s the catch: the hooks were from an interview I did about the new 3K site on the Upper East Side, and the other 3K/PreK spots across the city. I wish you got to see the volumes of DMs I get from people who suddenly want to know more about what their city is doing for them. Here’s a short list:

• families, particularly mothers, wanting more information about 2K/3K/PreK because they shouldn’t have to pay 25K
• veterans who didn’t know the city could extend their reach to help them
• 20-30-somethings who want to stop paying exorbitant subscription prices for services
• tenants looking to start a tenant union because they haven’t seen their landlord in ages
• parents whose students with disabilities need accommodations and wondering what the city is doing about it
• educators who needed to know the intention behind the new AI policy directly from the chancellor
• former students who trust me to help them make informed decisions on a large set of issues

I’m not a journalist, though I’m familiar with many. I’ve joked to the mayor and his team that I’m glad to play surrogate for these parts, but here’s the truth. I’ve lived in this city my entire life and I’ve never been granted this level of access to ask questions of people in power. In fact, long-time readers of this blog know how often I’ve gotten in trouble with mayors and chancellors past.

Do I agree that transparency matters in government? Sure! The argument goes that just because the federal government is currently engaging in unfathomable levels of grift and fascism doesn’t mean the mayoral administration gets away with a lack of transparency. But this is not that. For me and other people creating content for social impact, we see an information vacuum unfilled by the current – and often corporate – media.

So, we’ll intersperse our jokes and wisdoms with resources for our people.

Take it from me. In times like this, here’s a post you can actually trust.