Zohran Mamdani’s Final Rally Speech
In just a few days, New York will elect a candidate who describes himself as a ‘Democratic Socialist’ to the office of Mayor of the city that some people call the capital of Capitalism. He’s proposing a few easy-to-understand things: free childcare, free buses a four-year rent freeze for about 2 million residents, and a $30 minimum wage. Running on a simple ticket Mamdani has overcome not just the relentless smears of his opponents, the psychological and financial threats from the White House, but a campaign of overt racism and Islamophobia. In doing so, he has not diluted his message and has maintained his commitment to solidarity with the people of Palestine despite that being a position that would bring mass hostility from the US media.
He has created a team of 90,000 volunteers and ran a campaign of slick and clever ads and social media. Yes he oozes charisma but he has also create a simple programme that speaks out to ordinary peoples needs. He’s 34.
But while Mamdani is surging to victory, the Democratic leadership is running scared. Kamala Harris made an endorsement of sorts that was an unenthusiastic as you could possibly imagine. As Robert Reich writes Zohran Mamdani represents the future of the Democratic party | Robert Reich:
“Mamdani is horrifying the leaders of the Democratic party. Chuck Schumer still hasn’t endorsed him. Bill Clinton has endorsed Andrew Cuomo, who is spending what are probably the last days of his political career indulging in the kind of racist, Islamophobic attacks we’d expect from Trump. Meanwhile, the editorial board of the New York Times counsels “moderation”, urging Democratic candidates to move to the “center”. Tell me: where is the center between democracy and fascism, and why would anyone want to go there?”
“In truth, the Times’s so-called “moderate center” is code for corporate Democrats using gobs of money to pursue culturally conservative “swing” voters – which is what the Democratic party has been doing for decades. This is part of the reason America got Trump. Corporate Democrats took the party away from its real mission: to lift up the working class and lower-middle class and help the poor. Instead, they pushed for globalization, privatization and the deregulation of Wall Street. They became Republican-lite.”
He is relentlessly positive and unashamedly populist. He has leaned into New York’s multiculturalism and points directly forward, channeling FDR:
“We can make City Hall a place where New Yorkers come to expect the future, not just failure”.
This is a contemporary American Left re-made and that is why the Democrat leadership is entirely terrified. If he wins big on Tuesday he will have the momentum to be the model for re-making the Democratic party and strengthen the wing that includes AOC and Bernie Sanders. Here’s his final rally speech…
It’s inspiring but Act 1 is promising Act 2 is delivering and Act 3 is reckoning. I hope it turns out to be a comedy and everyone lives happily ever after and not a tragedy in which hubris is punished but time will tell when the play is over. In the meantime “fingers crossed”.
“Scotland is not for sale”. Say it ! Mean it ! and give the Yes movement the inspiration and courage to achieve it. That is the kind of leadership we so desperately need at this moment in history when the greedy, consumerist, power obsessed, climate change denying far right are making so much of the running.
@Roland Chaplain, The Listening Post unusually devoted a whole (sympathetic) episode to ‘Media, Money and Zohran Mamdani’:
https://www.aljazeera.com/video/the-listening-post/2025/11/1/media-money-zohran-mamdani
I have noticed a trend in Australia where politicians (at least of the progressive style) or debate chairs acknowledge the ancestral lands of the indigenous people (or First Nations) that they stand on when giving their orations. I’m not sure if this applies in Canadian mayoral elections, but it doesn’t seem to feature in the USA, AFAIK.
I mention this partly because I have just read two books by members/descendants of ‘Indigenous peoples of New York (state)’ as the Wikipedia page provides names for. I don’t know if Zohran Mamdani namechecks these peoples in his campaign speeches. Maybe it is easier for politicians to call out settler colonialism and genocide in foreign countries.
Well, yes, this goes way back to the ancient notion that elections are bought. One way or another. Even crowdfunded. That doesn’t invalidate Zohran Mamdani’s campaign, it just provokes the question: And what next?
Vibrant democracies could push imperial expansions, in historical terms.
What does democracy do in contractions? Is there a sense in which New York freebies are paid for by the sweat, tears and blood of a foreign slave class elsewhere? Or upon the non-human lives citizens feed upon?