Zohran Mamdani, an anti-Zionist Muslim socialist of South Asian descent, has won the New York City mayor's race, triumphing over billionaires and powerful Zionists to take the reins of city government in the heart of U.S. capitalism, where the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel resides.
President Donald Trump, who has called Mamdani a "Communist lunatic" and threatened to deport him (and cut federal funding to New York) should he become mayor, denied that his victory at the polls had anything to do with him, though it was clearly a repudiation of the MAGA (Make America Grotesque Again) agenda, while also much more than that.
Voter participation in New York was the highest it has been since 1969, exceeding two million, while Mamdani's campaign enlisted a diverse volunteer force of 100,000, including South Asians, Latinos, Africans, and indigenous peoples, an ethnic and cultural kaleidoscope of Muslims, Christians, and Jews.
The popular outpouring of support for Mamdani was expressed in New York City's two hundred different languages, a Tower of Babel whose champion - an immigrant, Muslim, and socialist - appears to be the antithesis of the vulgar degenerate in the White House. Upon news of victory, large crowds of supporters that had gathered in bars, nightclubs, and Mamdani campaign headquarters joyfully broke into song, and dance, and cheers.
In a powerfully lyrical victory speech before a packed crowd at the Paramount Theater in Brooklyn, Mamdani cited the great socialist leader Eugene Debs saying, "I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity." Again and again he called his victory a triumph of the working people of New York and assured them that the future "is in our hands." He gave thanks to Yemeni bodega owners, Trinidadian line cooks, Mexican grandmothers, Senegalese taxi drivers, Ethiopian aunties, and Uzbek nurses.
Excellent message discipline around vital economic issues (rent, transportation, child care) spurred the campaign to victory. On other topics, however, Mamdani has shown ideological vulnerability, such as when he called the presidents of Cuba and Venezuela "dictators" while downplaying the ruinous sanctions imposed on those countries by the dictatorship of capital. He also maintained that Israel has a right to exist "as a state with equal rights," without noting that it is precisely this that Jewish apartheid can never become. Finally, on the second anniversary of the October 7 attacks he denounced Hamas for having committed "a horrific war crime," without mentioning that Palestinians have both a legal and moral right to forcefully resist Israeli occupation, and that they were breaking out of a concentration camp full of children at the time.
But if we cannot yet pronounce this a new dawn for New York City, we can and should at least acknowledge that it's an expression of real democracy, as well as a timely reminder that tomorrow doesn't have to mean a repetition of today.
Sources:
"A New Progressive Generation in The U.S. Bursts Forth With Election Victories," La Jornada (Spanish), November 5, 2024
"Zohram Mamdani and a Small Victory for the People," Black Agenda Report, November 5, 2025
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