Zohran Mamdani built an impressive grassroots operation during his historic campaign for mayor of New York City, turning out 100,000 volunteers. How successful he will be in enacting his ambitious agenda once in office may largely depend on how well his administration converts and sustains the engagement of his base. Earlier this year, Mamdani’s campaign wisely turned to Marshall Ganz, one of the most experienced movement veterans and thinkers in the country, for advice.

At 82, Marshall, whose lifetime of organizing began with the Freedom Summer of 1964 and the United Farmworkers’ 1965-1970 grape strike, remains a sought-after advisor. He has counseled many movement leaders and electoral campaigns, including as the primary architect of the grassroots volunteer movement that helped elect Barack Obama president in 2008.

I studied with Marshall more than a decade ago at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he teaches organizing as a leadership craft and oversees the Practicing Democracy Project. Like many of his former students, the practices I learned from him changed my life.

Marshall calls for organizers to double down on our fundamental human practices of stories, relationships, strategy, structure and action — which he lays out in his most recent book, “People, Power, Change.” He cautions against radical individualism, transactional politics-as-marketing and viewing people as data points, and explains how to build individual and collective agency that grows leadership capacity, even in the face of difficult odds.

In my work with democracy organizations, from supporting Arab Spring activists to domestic and international open government reformers across continents, I have seen some of the pitfalls that Marshall speaks of and how they make it easy for our opponents to deem us as being out of touch. Marshall reminds us of the power of back-to-basics, commonsense approaches to live up to our values.

I sat down with Marshall on the eve of the New York election to discuss organizing in this moment of rising authoritarianism.