A Softening of Hearts: The Mayor Is Listening |
In a new year that promises to be as wretched, rancorous and bloody as the last one - cue oil lust and delusions of empire - we opt to celebrate the stirring hope and promise of newly elected Democratic Socialist and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has embraced diversity, collectivism, and the rare chance to shape "lives we (will) fill with freedom" when for too long "freedom has belonged only to those who can afford to buy it." Lesson for now: (Good) change happens.
Yeah, we know the bad kind does too, like America's heedless, illegal attack on and kidnapping from the sovereign Venezuela, "actions of a rogue state" overseen by an addled, clueless, slurring commander-in-chief (sic) making fake claims and struggling to stay upright during his own purportedly exultant news conference on storming "blind into Caracas." Add in preening drunktank bully Hegseth bragging, "America is back!" - to deadly quagmires - and spineless lil' Marco disparaging a country, ostensibly Cuba, "run by incompetent, senile men" - oops - and their brazen disregard of legal mandates to consult with Congress by dismissing that entire, pesky branch of government as "so so weak" - all told, the insane, unschooled act of hubris that is their inevitably catastrophic return to "naked imperialism" is best summed up by James Fallows: "Good God."
Which is why we'd rather bask, at least briefly, in Mamdani's stunning rise, and in the opportunity he represents "to transform and reinvent." "A moment like this comes rarely," he said at his jubilant inauguration, "and rarer still is it the people themselves whose hands are the ones upon the levers of change." Promising to govern "expansively and audaciously," Mamdani, 34, was ceremonially sworn in on New Year's Day by Bernie Sanders, a key political mentor, after taking his official oath the night before from A.G. Letitia James in the City Hall subway station. Both times, he put his hand on two Qurans - one a historic copy from the New York Public Library, and one that belonged to his father. Both times his wife Rama Duwaji, a 28-year-old designer and artist, stood by his side, and he repeatedly underscored themes of unity, equity, diversity and populism.
Mamdani arrived at his inauguration ceremony, not in a limo, but in a motorcade of taxis, a nod to a hunger strike he undertook with cabbies in 2021. In a hat tip to the trains crucial to millions of New Yorkers' daily commutes - in Mamdani's case from Queens - the PA announcer was Bernie Wagenblast, the trans subway system worker whose recorded voice endlessly warns riders, "Please stand away from the platform edge." Mandy Patinkin sang Over the Rainbow with the kids of Staten Island's PS 22 Chorus. Singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus sang the workers'/women's rights anthem Bread and Roses. Along with Bernie, AOC gave a fiery speech - "We have chosen courage over fear" - poet Cornelius Eady performed his poem Proof - "This is our time" - and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, a son of Grenada immigrants, wept as he repeated with the crowd, "I won't lose hope."
In his soaring speech to the raucous crowd, Mamdani insisted again and again that government should work to improve people’s lives, that its job is to meet the needs of the many not the elite few, that New York, "this gorgeous mosaic," belongs to its people, all of whom deserve an equal share in its governance. "I was elected as a Democratic Socialist, and I will govern as a Democratic Socialist," he said. "Here, where the language of the New Deal was born, we will return the vast resources of this city to everyday people...Construction workers in steel-toed boots and halal cart vendors whose knees ache from working all day," "neighbors who carry a plate of food to the elderly couple down the hall," "those in a rush who still lift strangers’ strollers up subway stairs, and every person who........