In mid -March of this year, Zohran Mamdani appeared at the Capitol of the State of New York, in Albany, to face Donald Trump’s border tsar, Tom Homan, the man at the head of the massive deportations of immigrants. When Mamdani saw Homan, who was there to meet with representatives of the Republican Party, he began to unbelieve him while some members of the security personnel prevented him from approaching. “How many New Yorkers are you going to stop?! How many more Yoorcans without charges?! Do you think in the first amendment?!”Mamdani shouted, who had gone to the state capital to protest the detention of the Protected Activist and student at Columbia Mahmoud Khalil. Then, Zohran Mamdani, a member of the New York State Assembly, was a stranger to the general public. But everything changed this week. Against prognosis, Mamdani has been imposed on Democratic primary for the Mayor’s Office of New York. And he has done it after facing, among others, the candidate of the Democratic establishment, the famous former New York Governor Andrew M. Cuomo.
But how is it possible that Mamdani, a young Muslim immigrant, 33, has defeated Cuomo, the Democratic Supercandidato that supports the great leaders of the party, the most important corporations, at the favorite of billionaire Michael Bloomberg? This is the question that is now asked in the high spheres of the Democratic Party, where they still try to understand the defeat of Kamala Harris against Donald Trump. The answer, perhaps, is in the question itself. Faced with the elites, most New York Democrats have chosen the type most similar to them. “New Yorkers and all Americans understand that, in the richest country in the world, they should not have to fight daily just to bring food to the table, pay the rent or medical invoices. These are the people whose existence does not know the Democratic advisors, “he wrote these days.
Mamdani has not reduced his campaign to a mere opposition to Donald Trump’s policies, but to the promise of policies that the American elite, also the Democrat, considers “radical”. Affairs such as freezing of rental price, free public transport and children’s school or tax rise to the richest. In an interview he conducted to The New York Times During the primary campaign, Mamdani denounced the difficulties in living in the most populous city in the United States. “There are too many New Yorkers who do not know if they can be called that next yearthat they do not know if they can pay the rent, the nursery, the purchase or even the subway card, “he said.
According to the main organization to fight poverty in New York, One in four New Yorkers is poor. “The city’s poverty rate reached 25% compared to 23% last year, and almost doubles the national poverty rate of 13%,” they point out in a report that they have published this year, based on data from 2023. “The data also demonstrates that, of the 2.02 million New Yorkers who currently live in poverty, 1.6 million are adults and 420 are children. (25%) and Infant (26%) increased a percentage point each in relation to the previous year, which places the child poverty rate at the highest level observed in the Poverty Tracker data since the study began to collect data in 2017, “they add. But according to this same organization, “not only those who live in poverty have difficulty reaching the end of the month.” “Material difficulties, defined as the serious difficulty in paying food, housing, factories and any type of medical need, are even more widespread in the city and affect New Yorkers who live above the poverty threshold,” they warn from Robin Hood.
Mamdani has not only managed to put the most basic problems that ravage most of the New York population, but also better than any other the American turn with respect to Israel’s siege over Palestine, as indicated by the main surveys. In addition to having been arrested for participating in a protest against the Israeli response to Hamas attacks on October 7, 2023, Mamdani also spent five days on hunger strike to denounce what he calls “genocide”. During those five days, Mamdani and other activists read every day the names of some of the more than then 15,000 Palestinians killed. “We read these names daily because President Biden, in a horrible and incorrect way, questioned whether the death toll in Gaza was even credible. In Washington, it has been a long time to not believe the Palestinians in life, but now Biden says that we cannot believe them in his death,” Mamdani wrote after the protest.
Zohran Mamdani, in the New York subway.
If there is someone who has understood the role that Mamdani can play against Donald Trump, almost before even the same Democratic party, he has been the president of the United States himself. “It has finally happened. The Democrats have gone out of line. Zohran Mamdani, a 100%communist lunatic, has just won the Democratic primaries and is on its way to becoming mayor. We have already had radical leftists before, but this is becoming a bit ridiculous. It has a horrible appearance, its voice is rough, it is not very intelligent, it has Aoc+3 [así se refiere a Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez y a otras tres congresistas demócratas]to all the fools supporting him, and even our great Palestinian senator, the weeping Chuck Schumer, humiliates himself before him. Yes, it is a crucial moment in the history of our country! “Trump wrote the night of June 25 in his social network.
The long senator by Vermont Bernie Sanders wondered in the British newspaper if the Democratic Party can learn from Mamdani’s victory. “The lesson of his campaign is that it is not enough to criticize Trump and his destructive policies. We must present a positive vision and an analysis of why things are as they are. It is not enough to maintain a status quo that harms most Americans. At a time when hope is increasing before changing course. “
In spite of everything, there are times when the wind forces a course determined by great force with which one is tied to the helm. And, in this case, New York Democratic voters have grateful. Zohran Mamdani, son of Mira Nair, filmmaker nominated for an Oscar, and Mahmood Mamdani, professor at Columbia University, It can become the next Mayor of New York.
