Tag: Zohran Mamdani

Picking On Mamdani For All The Wrong Reasons

By Asad Mirza

Zohran Mamdani’s surprise victory in the Democratic mayoral primary for the New York City, has indeed stunned the city’s elite. Mamdani defeated former Governor Andrew Cuomo and emerged as the frontrunner in a race that all but guarantees his path to the City Hall as a Democratic nominee. Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist and Queens assemblyman, won a record-setting primary victory, and unions, grassroots Democratic groups, and savvy elected officials are rushing to back him.

However, what puzzles one is the unexpected campaign launched by the city’s elite, including the wealthiest and most influential citizens of the city, who are up in arms against Mamdani. This also reflects the real face of the American society and the people who control it.

Apparently, Mamdani ran his primary campaign based on his ideas and suggestions to improve the city. But in fact, most of these proposals have been raised in the past too but have not been implemented.

In fact, nearly all his cost-of-living proposals have been enacted or attempted in some form or the other in New York or elsewhere in the US. Former NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio tried freezing the rent on the city’s stabilised units three times, in 2015, 2016, and 2020. Raising the minimum wage for workers? Following a decade of increases approved in Albany, the city’s minimum wage hit $16.50, this year. Mamdani’s call for free public buses sounds similar to the MTA’s Fair Fares programme, which currently lets low-income New Yorkers ride for half-price. And an estimated 3 million hungry New Yorkers get 1.6 million government-supplied meals every day through federal SNAP benefits, so opening five government-owned grocery stores (one in each borough) is more like a tiny welfare project.  

Mamdani’s threat to tax wealthy New Yorkers also sounds familiar, bills promising to do exactly that have repeatedly been introduced in Albany for at least a decade; but all died at the committee stage. It is also worth noting that in 2021, the then-candidate for mayor, Adams called for a special tax on ultrawealthy New Yorkers. “If you make more than $5 million a year, we are asking you to pay a little more to stabilise our city,” he said at the time, a suggestion he promptly dropped after taking office.

Meanwhile, business leaders are warning that Mamdani’s platform—including proposals for city-run grocery stores and a freeze on rents in regulated units—poses a threat to New York’s economic future. Some of New York City’s wealthiest business leaders and political power players in emergency mode, are pouring money into independent groups determined to block his victory in the general election, the Wall Street Journal reported.

At least one new group—New Yorkers for a Better Future Mayor 25—has been formed with a war chest of $20 million, according to sources familiar with the effort. It’s just one of several anti-Mamdani efforts being planned by figures including Pershing Square CEO Bill Ackman and former Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Another effort, led by Giuliani and former NYPD detective Bo Dietl, is aiming to raise $10 million. But while these financiers are aligned in opposition to Mamdani, they have yet to unite behind a single rival candidate.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon labelled Mamdani’s politics “more Marxist than socialist” and dismissed his agenda as “ideological mush.” Yet as donors mobilise to fight him, political strategists worry that the barrage of outside money could backfire, feeding into Mamdani’s anti-establishment narrative and turning voters off from billionaire-backed campaigns.

However, most important is to understand how did Mamdani secure such a historic victory? In fact, he did exactly what national Democrats, stunned by the party’s defeats in the 2024 presidential and congressional elections, keep saying they know they must do, but have never done that. “Zohran Mamdani talked about issues of relevance to working-class people. The city responded to him, and he won the [primary],” explained Senator Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont and two-time presidential candidate.

Mamdani is a democratic socialist – like Sanders and US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Yes, he has taken bold, progressive stands on economic issues while advocating for international and domestic human rights. But, as the primary results illustrate, he is also a very popular Democratic nominee for one of the highest-profile elected positions in the United States.

Despite that fact, Democratic congressional leaders who come from New York City, such as Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, have yet to endorse Mamdani. Nor have other prominent New York Democrats, such as Governor Kathy Hochul and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand—though the latter did make Islamophobic remarks about Mamdani that she later apologised for. And some Democrats who represent suburban communities, such as US Representative Laura Gillen, have been outspoken in their criticism of a party nominee whom they disagree with on issues ranging from tax policy and US support for the Israeli assault on Gaza.

The reluctance of prominent Democrats to formally endorse the party’s nominee has led to complaints from progressives. “It’s time for every Democratic leader to get on board,” says New York Working Families Party codirector Jasmine Gripper.

The obvious frustration expressed by the city’s elite and wealthiest citizens on Mamdani’s victory, reflects the fact that whatever the leaders and builders of the American society may proclaim, the reality is completely opposite to that.

Mamdani’s campaign promises have been termed as Soviet style taking over of America, even the lack of support by Democrat’s Socialist wing exemplifies the fact that none is willing to break the status quo and contribute to the less fortunate sections of the society. Moreover, his India-roots and stand on Gaza have been instrumental in the Islamophobic and Israel-hater slurs against Mamdani.

This shows that all said and done the American society is still not able to accept someone on merit and his promise of reforms and welfare of the poor. Most just want to line their own pockets and speak rhetorically about labelling him as antisemitic. Democracy in its true form has yet to take roots in America. 

The writer is a New Delhi-based senior commentator on national, international, defence and strategic affairs, environmental issues, an interfaith practitioner, and a media consultant

New York Says Salaam Bombay!

By Mahendra Ved

Come November, if Amitabh Bachchan visits New York to remake old hit, Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna (2006) or if Shah Rukh Khan, who dies in Kal Ho Na Ho (2003), wants to be re-born in a sequel, they may face competition from the likely new city mayor – Zohran Kwame Mamdani. He borrowed to great effect their trademark words and gestures during a tumultuous election campaign.

Zohran mimicked, probably still does, Deewar movie’s iconic Mere paas maa hai line and spreading out his arms SRK-like, exhorted the New Yorkers, “Mere paas aap hain” (I have your support).

A video reimagines a line sung by Kishore Kumar in Karz (1980): Kya tumne kabhi kisi ko pyaar kiya? Kisiko dil diya? (Have you ever loved someone? Given someone your heart?). Mamdani’s version: “Have you ever voted for anyone? Have you ever ranked anyone?”, covering explainers on ranked-choice voting to multilingual, immigrant voters. These Bollywoodian ‘re-mixes’ worked.

To win their vote, he undertook walkathons and sent out appeals in different languages. His campaign focused on affordability, with policy goals including a rent freeze, free buses, and universal childcare. In a speech hours before he won the primary, he promised “to govern our city as a model for the Democratic party – a party where we fight for working people with no apology”.

His viral campaign video, deeply infused with South Asian culture and entertainment, garnered praise for its cheery tone and energised young voters – a factor many social commentators deemed a crucial demographic for Democrats.

Mamdani’s real success, however, is still far away. He must defeat his Republican rival and any other contender to be the mayor. The fight has only begun, and the buzz that his winning the Democratic Party nomination last month, defeating four-time mayor Andrew Cuomo, has refused to die.

The challenge, both from and for Zohran Kwame Mamdani, 33, a greenhorn assemblyman, is huge. For, in seeking to lead the US’s most prestigious and politically key city, he has posed the biggest challenge so far to President Donald Trump. He has caught Trump unawares, and not just the Americans, but all those across the world who are riding the current Right-wing political surge.

Trump is not the first and will not be the last of this global phenomenon. In menacing terms, he has called Mamdani a “lunatic Communist”. Busy deporting thousands he considers ‘illegal’ migrants, he has said he would check if Zohran is one of them. He has threatened to arrest him. And if Mamdani succeeds, block funds to New York. Last century’s McCarthyism may be America’s past, but Trump and his MAGA supporters are the present. They call the political shots.

Neither a ‘lunatic’ nor a ‘Communist’, Mamdani is a social democrat, a ‘progressive’ in America’s political parlance. He has picked up the gauntlet Trump has thrown and has urged New Yorkers not to be intimidated, telling them: “If you speak up, they will come for you.”

It is not going to be easy. The ordinary, under-privileged New Yorkers voted in the primary. They outnumbered the rich and the powerful who, residing in upscale NY suburbs, were complacent or had ceased to be voters.

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Mamdani won by promising free city bus rides, starting government-owned shops, freezing rents on private homes, cutting back on police and things that the large populace of have-nots would love. But he is talking socialism in the world’s most influential capitalist haven.

New York’s powerful business and corporate groups would not relish this talk. Of them, the highly influential Jews are angry at Zohran’s advocacy of the Intifada and calling Israeli premier Benyamin Netanyahu a “war criminal”. The coming weeks must see their fightback. The socialist combination of Mandela and Martin Luther King that Mamdani quotes reverentially may be heady for the poor New Yorkers, but not for the rich.

It also poses a dilemma for his party. During the Presidential poll primaries for the Democratic Party in 2016 and 2020, the voters might have rejected Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ idea of socialism in favour of Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. But five years later in New York, they decided to give Mamdani a chance.  The mood change is difficult to gauge.

One thing that would certainly prompt opposition to Zohran, tooth and nail, is his Syrian-American wife, Rama Duwaji. Her multimedia career includes pro-Palestinian works. According to the New York Post, Duwaji’s work — “largely pen-and-ink-style digital illustrations — centres on pro-Palestinian, Arab and female identity themes, showing burqa-clad women crushed under rubble or keffiyeh-clad protesters being pinned down by police.”

As cross-cultural battle lines are etched, even the South Asian may be divided. If the current India-Pakistan spat helps or hurts Zohran is unclear. He has clubbed Indian Prime Minister Modi with Netanyahu for what happened in 2002 in Gujarat, where his father, Mahmood, an eminent academic at Harvard, has roots.

The family background may be a factor, judging from some critical reactions from ‘white’ Americans. A picture shows Zohran eating with his hand, prompting calls that he should “go back”. Eating with your hands may be culturally “un-American”, but Indians consider it divine and Asians, normal. So, where should he “go back”?

Who will tell the New Yorkers that once touted as “a nation of immigrants”, America ought to be at ease with this Uganda-born son of a Gujarati Muslim and a Punjabi Hindu mother brought up hundreds of miles away from Punjab? Mira Nair, as a celebrated filmmaker, and Mahmood, the academic, have delved into Asian, African and American lives in their works with equal ease. 

Although Mira is said to be behind Zohran’s well-organised campaign, speculation persists about her ‘Hindu’ name being kept out to ensure the ‘Muslim’ vote. Influential American media have kept her name out even as they celebrate Zohran’s ‘multiculturalism’. One wonders if America views this Asian-African synthesis only in Hindu-Muslim terms.

Zohran’s middle name, of African origin, denotes extremes in fortune, health and spirituality, of someone versatile and idealistic. How does this mayoral candidate fit into a vibrant American society that people from across the world dream of being part of and flock to, both legally and illegally?

New York Believes In A Dream

By Amit Sengupta

Tonight, we made history. In the words of Nelson Mandela, ‘It always seems impossible until it is done.’ My friends, we have done it. I will be your Democratic nominee for the mayor of New York City
– Zohran Mamdani

This was after midnight last Wednesday. The New York dawn was waiting in the next corner of the nearest by-lane, surrounded by a zigzag of streets and many more dark by-lanes. It seemed that the summer sun was bound to shine on this democratic city of the working class, the homeless, the immigrants, and the middle class, where the super rich and the rich call the shots.

Winters, with its frozen, chilly winds, are exceptionally harsh – especially for the homeless – the cold enters the bones and stays there. The homeless, mostly Afro-Americans, sit around the overground lids on the streets, of underground heating pipes, inhaling the warm steam which would flow out. It’s cruel and nasty – the way the homeless have been left to their tragic fate by the power establishment in America, and New York.

So much so, New York is perhaps one of the most expensive cities in the world, despite its eternally busy, crowded, run-down underground metro, almost 127 years old, with rats on the tracks, drop-outs, asking for a return ticket; while fabulous musicians from Latin America play the pan flute in the subways, and daily travelers happily dropping coins on their donation box. Plus, the metro stations, some of them are eternally soaked with a strange, simmering, stagnant smell all over, absorbed in its rusted walls and platforms, the smell sticking to the skin.

And, yet, besides the predictable Times Square billboards, flashing all over, the shops and restaurants of the rich, and the mixed crowd in different colours, including protesters of all kinds, and the backstreets with Indian and Bangladeshi food, New York remains a democratic city. I was told that immigrants, including those escaping repressive regimes, many not having proper documents, have really no tangible fear in this city. No one seems to bother them.

The city looks as if has lived in its own soul and body since decades, inheriting its own mysteries, its chaos and beauty, its diverse culture and heritage, and its dark past, as depicted in Martin Scorsese’s 1860s crime epic: Gangs of New York starring superb actor Daniel Day-Lewes, as ‘Bill the Butcher’ and a young Leonardo DiCaprio.

It’s not clinical and sanitized – despite the assumed order, there is a sudden and eternal chaos, a symphony in the synthesis. The walls are faded with seasons, the mechanical post office is old and empty, and the tall skyscrapers across the Hudson river, including the Trump Towers, look scary. The rich are cocooned in their isolated comfort zones, the ordinary folks are on the streets and metros. And the Penn Station is forever crowded – even as the landscape becomes empty and dreary, bereft of life, as you board a train to Princeton University, where Jhumpa Lahiri was teaching before she started a novel in Italian.

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Any sign of life thereafter fills you with a sudden reassurance, because beyond New York, across the suburbs, it’s a relentless and vast landscape, as dull and bereft of life as most suburbs beyond American cities, with occasional parking lots here and there. Even the little township across the Statue of Liberty seems so desolate and lonely. Not even a Starbucks outlet can be spotted next to the unwinding highways.

America is so vast and under-populated, with huge expanses of eternal emptiness, that a strange kind of depression enters you body and soul, like a heavy stone which refuses to go. Even when I returned to India, the stone refused to go away.

In contrast, Boston, Massachusetts, not so far from New York, the bustling city of students and teachers, Harvard, MIT, etc, and the beautiful suburb of Cambridge across the river Charles, seems more cosy and accessible. It shares the democratic ethos of New York.

I walked across the twin cities, high on a big glass of delicious, chilled beer costing just about $5. You can take a book and sit anywhere, across the river, or in the open air cafes near Harvard, or next to a tiny book shop where they do book readings. You can visit the museum, and stay with a couple of Van Gogh paintings in silence.

Ironically, Massachusetts comes from the Indian-Algonquin word, ‘meaning great hill, small place, or, the range of hills; predictably, this entire area and its beautiful surroundings in the suburbs, with dense forests and huge lakes, as in Wellesley, with its famous college, were the original homeland of the natives. They gave the whites fruits and shelter, tended to their wounds after a long and difficult voyage on the sea from England, and the whites in return gave them what? Bullets, small pox hidden in quilts, shackles, genocide, forced Christianity, and mass displacement.

A stranger among strangers, an outsider like me, like an Albert Camus character, has no option but to feel totally alienated and detached in New York; while, surely, those who live here might be loving their city deeply. This is because the city might have grown on them, with its synthesis of multiple cultures, its great museum of modern art, MoMA, its huge public library, its old-fashioned democracy and freedom, and its memories deeply embedded on its run-down streets and faded walls.

No wonder, New Yorkers were the first to stand up and protest in solidarity with the people of Los Angeles, when Trump dispatched his armed military and ICE to raid the homes of alleged immigrants. People in LA just came out in outrage and anger – in waves. A belligerent Trump had no choice but to backtrack.

This is where Zohran Mamdani has suddenly arrived like a shooting star, a rising meteor, a friendly politician who understands the ground reality and aligns with the margins, a bright and accessible leader, and a progressive democrat who has little to do with the typical mainstream democrat who often look, operate and talk like a Right-wing republican, starting from Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who backed the Gaza genocide and pumped millions to the mass murderers in Tel Aviv. That is why, Bernie Sanders, Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, and other ‘socialists’ backed him. That is why Trump has reportedly called him a “communist, a radical Leftist”, etc.

Born in Uganda, son of historian Mahmood Mamdani and filmmaker Mira Nair, Zohran Mamdani has said: “It’s been difficult. It’s been difficult to have to deal with the regular and repeated smears and slander upon my name and on the very basis of my faith…And I think what’s so sad is that this is but a glimpse into what life is like for many Muslim New Yorkers and many New Yorkers of different faiths who are constantly being told that they don’t belong in this city and in this country that they love.” He said New York is a city “for all of us”. He denied that he is a communist.

He has quoted Martin Luther King (Jr): “Call it democracy or call it democratic socialism. There has to be a better distribution of wealth for all of God’s children in this country.”

Barack Obama got a Noble Prize for Peace without doing one bit for peace, when, for no rhyme or reason, the prize was given to him soon after he became president. He promised the moon, and did so little. Now, many cynics are asking, ‘Will Zohran go the Obama way?’

Cynics apart, not a ‘red star’, Zohran Mamdani, is a star, a political and cultural symbol of the new wave of politics emerging in the world (except in India, of course.) He has promised to tax the rich, make New York affordable, provide free child care, freeze rent for ordinary folks, create subsidized transport, among other welfare measures. Clearly, he has no love lost for billionaires.

In the same manner that he seems to have no love lost for Benjamin Netanyahu. And, a certain Mr M.