The man we need
There’s something about Zohran Mamdani’s incontestable victory as the first Muslim, South Asian, African-born immigrant mayor of New York City that’s so delicious, it tickles the champagne anarchist in me. That the old guard—both the Democratic and Republican establishments, particularly the genocide-justifying Zionists among them—are foaming at the mouth in full meltdown mode is especially satisfying to see.
Hysterical white women in a frenzy, furiously posting 100 stories on Instagram in the 24 hours since the election (I’m looking at you, has-been actress Debra Messing), saying Mamdani would target all the Jews. Pathetic rich people bristling at the prospect of having to pay two percent more in income tax and threatening to leave New York. Sitting US senators scaremongering, as usual, warning New Yorkers and the nation to get ready, for not just Sharia Law was coming for them, but full-on Marxist communism, all because he plans to provide fare-free city buses, rent control, and free childcare.
His own rivals continue to mispronounce his name. Their reactions say so much more about their astounding ignorance and stunning lack of grace despite their obvious privilege than about Mamdani.
A masterclass in authenticity and inclusivity
That Mamdani triumphed without the billions of big business backing his campaign, without the support of legacy media (including the bastions of so-called liberal thought), without the endorsement of the leadership of his own party, signals a paradigm shift that is set to disrupt a deeply entrenched system that pretends to be about the preservation of freedom and democracy, but really is about the protection of imperial capitalist power.
Failing to win over such deplorable men as Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Bill Ackman, and Michael Bloomberg served to prove how threatening he was to the establishment. And that’s a flex in my book.
His entire campaign was a masterclass in authenticity and inclusivity—buzzwords I see bandied about in every single symposium or lecture, here and abroad, that purport to address the issues faced by the marginalized and disadvantaged, yet almost always fail to go beyond rhetoric into action. Buzzwords that have become empty global speak and are ultimately meaningless have suddenly gained new currency in the form of a brown immigrant.
If that’s not a quintessential New York story, I don’t know what is.
Progressive leadership, solid credentials
Mamdani is a once-in-a-generation political talent, as the journalist and pundit Mehdi Hassan noted. He is young, progressive, bright, and savvy, with a remarkable skill for connecting with all sorts of people—the actual melting pot that is woven into the unique fabric that is New York City, from Hispanic servers and Yemeni bodega owners to Korean nail technicians, City Hall employees, business owners, parents, and constituents of all ages and ethnicities. He campaigned speaking their languages, too—literally addressing them in Arabic and Spanish, aside from English.
Moreover, his father is Mahmood Mamdani, a distinguished academic who teaches post-colonial theory, while his mother is the film director Mira Nair, who turned down Hollywood blockbusters to create independent films that explored serious issues such as race, displacement, and diaspora. And his wife, Rama Duwaji, is a Syrian-American artist who makes pointedly political work, and who wore a dress made by a Palestinian-Jordanian designer, Zeid Hijazi. He himself majored in African studies.
So his credentials are solid: He is steeped in activism, while being fully aware of his privilege.
Who sits at the table now?
Racism laced with Islamophobia is the underlying current that runs through all the jabs against him. Because while the American dream is part of national mythology, the imperial gatekeepers still decide who gets to sit at the table. Brown and black people are supposed to stay in their lane. South Asians were supposed to be the engineers. They could win spelling bees and go on to helm tech companies. They could even rise to their own level of incompetence and become the director of the FBI. As long as they stayed in their lane.
Which is what Obama did. And what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did. And what Kamala Harris would have done as president: put empire before people. And their accommodation of capitalist and military priorities has a significant impact on the rest of the world.
But Zohran Mamdani didn’t stay in his lane. He dared to tear down the entire highway. In fact, a seat at the table is not what he wants; I think he wants to change the whole damn room and build a completely new house. An affordable one, mind you. I just hope he never sells out.
I think about Dawn, a poem Federico Garcia Lorca wrote when he lived in New York between 1929 and 1930. It is a dark work that offers a dismal picture of a city “mired in numbers and laws / in mindless games, in fruitless labors,” where “morning and hope are impossible there.”
Perhaps it’s possible to hope now.
