Acyn@Acyn
Mamdani: We will provide our own answer to that age-old question: Who does New York belong to? Well, my friends, we can look to Madiba and the South African Freedom Charter. New York belongs to all who live in it.
Together, we will tell a new story of our city. This will not be a tale of one city governed only by the 1%, nor will it be a tale of two cities—the rich versus the poor. It will be a tale of 8.5 million cities, each of them a New Yorker with hopes and fears, each a universe, each of them woven together.
The authors of this story will speak Pashto and Mandarin, Yiddish and Creole. They will pray in mosques, at shul, at churches, at gurdwaras, mandirs, and temples—and many will not pray at all. They will be Russian Jewish immigrants in Brighton Beach, Italians in Rossville, and Irish families in Woodhaven, many of whom came here with nothing but a dream of a better life—a dream which has withered away. They will be young people in cramped Marble Hill apartments where the walls shake when the subway passes. They will be Black homeowners in St. Albans, whose homes represent a physical testament to triumph over decades of low-paid labor and redlining. They will be Palestinian New Yorkers in Bay Ridge, who will no longer have to contend with a politics that speaks of universalism and then makes them the exception.
Few of these 8.5 million will fit into neat and easy boxes. Some will be voters from Hillside Avenue or Fordham Road who supported President Trump a year before they voted for me, tired of being failed by their party’s establishment. The majority will not use the language that we often expect from those who wield influence—and I welcome the change. For too long, those fluent in the good grammar of civility have deployed decorum to mask agendas of cruelty. Many of these people have been betrayed by the established order.
We will draw this city closer together. We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism. If our campaign demonstrated that the people of New York yearn for solidarity, then let this government foster it. Because no matter what you eat, how you pray, or where you come from, the words that most define us are the two we all share: New Yorkers.