Mamdani channels Socialist icons Debs and Nehru in victory speech after NYC Mayoral win
New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani
celebrated his election Tuesday night with a speech steeped in socialist theory, quoting Eugene Debs and Jawaharlal Nehru as touchstones for what he called a “new age” in the city’s politics.
“The sun may have set over our city this evening,” Mamdani told supporters, “but as Eugene Debs once said, I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.”
Mamdani, the son of Oscar-nominated filmmaker Mira Nair and Columbia professor Mahmood, was born and raised in Africa before moving to New York City in 1999.
“The working people of New York
have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands,” he said. “Fingers bruised from lifting boxes on the warehouse floor, palms calloused from delivery bike handlebars, knuckles scarred with kitchen burns. These are not hands that have been allowed to hold power. And yet, over the last 12 months, you have dared to reach for something greater.”
Later in his remarks, Mamdani quoted Jawaharlal Nehru, the socialist founding prime minister of India, saying: “A moment comes, but rarely in history when we step out from the old to the new. When an age ends and when the soul of a nation long suppressed finds utterance.”
Mamdani added, “Tonight we have stepped out from the old into the new. So let us speak now with clarity and conviction that cannot be misunderstood about what this new age will deliver, and for whom.”
He promised sweeping action on housing, transit and childcare, pledging “the most ambitious agenda to tackle the cost of living crisis that this city has seen since the days of LaGuardia.”
Mamdani framed his victory as part of a generational shift toward socialist ideals.
“Together, we will usher in a generation of change, and if we embrace this brave new course, rather than fleeing from it, we can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves.”
He ended with a pointed message to President Trump: “So Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you. Turn the volume up.”
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