Samuel Levitan (left) and Ujji Bathla tell voters about Zohran Mamdani’s campaign platform to make New York City more affordable. But they were initially drawn by his pro-Palestinian politics.

On a bright autumn afternoon, the air crisp with possibility, Major Mark Park in Queens was filled with hundreds of Zohran Mamdani supporters — men wearing kufi caps and labor union T-shirts, groups chanting in Bengali while unfurling political banners, women pushing baby carriages.

Samuel Levitan, 23, and Ujji Bathla, 21, who have been volunteering for Mr. Mamdani’s mayoral campaign for nearly a year, were huddled in semicircles of young adults, dispensing address lists, pamphlets and door-knocking instructions. They wore bright orange ski caps emblazoned with “Zohran for New York City.” Mr. Bathla’s denim jacket was festooned with political buttons that laid out the candidate’s ideas: “Freeze the rent”; “Fast & free buses”; and “Child care for all.”

But it was not Mr. Mamdani’s economic policies that initially drew them to his campaign. It was his involvement in the protest movement advocating for Palestinian rights. After two years of demonstrating against the war in Gaza, they had an opportunity to put their activism into a project with the promise of tangible and more immediate success.

“It’s not just protesting into the ether,” said Mr. Levitan, who is studying for a master’s degree in public health at Columbia University. The campaign “is almost like a funnel for all this dispersed energy and passion and drive to be an advocate for so