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AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.
We continue our coverage of the New Year’s Day inauguration of the democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani as the mayor of New York City. It was below freezing, huge public ceremony outside City Hall, with thousands attending. We turn now to independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, originally from Brooklyn, who swore in Mamdani.
SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: I’m here mostly to thank the people of New York City. At a time in our country’s history when we are seeing too much hatred, too much divisiveness and too much injustice, thank you for electing Zohran Mamdani as your mayor. New York, thank you for inspiring our nation. Thank you for giving us, from coast to coast, the hope and the vision that we can create government that works for all, not just the wealthy and the few.
In a moment when people in America, and, in fact, throughout the world, are losing faith in democracy, over 90,000 of you in this city volunteered for Zohran’s campaign. You knocked on doors. You shared your dreams and your hopes for the future of this city. And in the process, you took on the Democratic establishment, the Republican establishment, the president of the United States and some enormously wealthy oligarchs, and you defeated them in the biggest political upset in modern American history.
AMY GOODMAN: Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, speaking just before he swore in democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani as the mayor of New York. Yes, Mayor Mamdani made history as New York’s first Muslim, first South Asian, first African-born mayor; at the age of 34, the youngest mayor of New York in generations. This is part of Mayor Mamdani’s historic inaugural address.
MAYOR ZOHRAN MAMDANI: My fellow New Yorkers, today begins a new era. I stand before you, moved by the privilege of taking this sacred oath, humbled by the faith that you have placed in me, and honored to serve as either your 111th or 112th mayor of New York City.
But I do not stand alone. I stand alongside you, the tens of thousands of you gathered here in Lower Manhattan, warmed against the January chill by the resurgent flame of hope. I stand alongside countless more New Yorkers watching from cramped kitchens in Flushing and barber shops in East New York, from cellphones propped against the dashboards of parked taxi cabs at LaGuardia, from hospitals in Mott Haven and libraries in El Barrio that have too long known only neglect. I stand alongside construction workers in steel-toed boots and halal cart vendors whose knees ache from working all day. I stand alongside 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 makes the choice, day after day, even when it feels impossible, to call our city home.
I stand alongside over 1 million New Yorkers who voted for this day nearly two months ago. And I stand just as resolutely alongside those who did not. I know there are some who view this administration with distrust or disdain, or who see politics as permanently broken. And while only action can change minds, I promise you this: If you are a New Yorker, I am your mayor. …
And most of all, thank you to the people of New York. A moment like this comes rarely. Seldom do we hold such an opportunity to transform and reinvent. Rarer still is it the people themselves whose hands are the ones upon the levers of change. And yet we know that too often in our past, moments of great possibility have been promptly surrendered to small imagination and smaller ambition. What was promised was never pursued. What could have changed remained the same. For the New Yorkers most eager to see our city remade, the weight has only grown heavier. The weight has only grown longer.
In writing this address, I have been told that this is the occasion to reset expectations, that I should use this opportunity to encourage the people of New York to ask for little and expect even less. I will do no such thing. The only expectation I seek to reset is that of small expectations.
Beginning today, we will govern expansively and audaciously. We may not always succeed, but never will we be accused of lacking the courage to try. To those who insist that the era of big government is over, hear me when I say this: No longer will City Hall hesitate to use its power to improve New Yorkers’ lives.
For too long we have turned to the private sector for greatness while accepting mediocrity from those who serve the public. I cannot blame anyone who has come to question the role of government, whose faith in democracy has been eroded by decades of apathy. We will restore that trust by walking a different path, one where government is no longer solely the final recourse for those struggling, one where excellence is no longer the exception.
We expect greatness from the cooks wielding a thousand spices, from those who stride out onto our Broadway stages and from our starting point guard at Madison Square Garden. Let us demand the same from those who work in government. In a city where the mere names of our streets are associated with the innovation of the industries that call them home, we will make the word “City Hall” synonymous with both resolve and results.
As we embark upon this work, let us advance a new question — a new answer to the question asked of every generation: Who does New York belong to? For much of our history, the response from City Hall has been simple: It belongs only to the wealthy and well-connected, those who never strain to capture the attention of those in power. Working people have reckoned with the consequences: crowded classrooms and public housing developments where the elevators sit out of order, roads littered with potholes and buses that arrive half an hour late, if at all, wages that do not rise, and corporations that rip off consumers and employees alike. …
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 eight-and-a-half 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 church, at gurdwaras and 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 lesser-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 eight-and-a-half 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. 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. But in our administration, their needs will be met. Their hopes and dreams and interests will be reflected transparently in government. They will shape our future. And if for too long these communities have existed as distinct from one another, 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. And it will be New Yorkers who reform a long-broken property tax system, New Yorkers who will create a new Department of Community Safety that will tackle the mental health crisis and let the police focus on the job they signed up to do, New Yorkers who will take on the bad landlords who mistreat their tenants, and free small business owners from the shackles of bloated bureaucracy. And I am proud to be one of those New Yorkers.
When we won the primary last June, there were many who said these aspirations and those who held them had come out of nowhere. Yet one man’s nowhere is another man’s somewhere. This movement came out of eight-and-a-half million somewheres — taxicab depots and Amazon warehouses, DSA meetings and curbside domino games. The powers that be had looked away from these places for quite some time, if they’d known about them at all. So they dismissed them as nowhere. But in our city, where every corner of these five boroughs holds power, there is no nowhere, and there is no no one. There is only New York, and there are only New Yorkers. Eight-and-a-half million New Yorkers will speak this new era into existence. It will be loud. It will be different. It will feel like the New York we love. No matter how long you have called this city home, that love has shaped your life.
I know that it has shaped mine. This is the city where I set land speed records on my Razor scooter at the age of 12, quickest four blocks of my life; the city where I ate powdered donuts at half-times during AYSO soccer games and realized I probably was not going to be going pro; the city where I devoured two big slices at Koronet’s Pizza, played cricket with my friends at Ferry Point Park, and took the 1 train to the Bx10, only to still show up late to Bronx Science; the city where I have gone on hunger strike just outside these gates, sat claustrophobic on a stalled N train just after Atlantic Avenue and waited in quiet terror for my father to emerge from 26 Federal Plaza; the city where I took a beautiful woman named Rama to McCarren Park on our first date and swore a different oath, to become an American citizen on Pearl Street.
To live in New York, to love New York is to know that we are the stewards of something without equal in our world. Where else can you hear the sound of the steelpan, savor the smell of sancocho and pay $9 for coffee on the same block? Where else could a Muslim kid like me grow up eating bagels and lox every Sunday? That love will be our guide as we pursue our agenda.
Here, where the language of the New Deal was born, we will return the vast resources of this city to the workers who call it home. Not only will we make it possible for every New Yorker to afford a life they love once again, we will overcome the isolation that too many feel, and connect the people of this city to one another. The cost of child care will no longer discourage young adults from starting a family, because we will deliver universal child care for the many by taxing the wealthiest few. Those in rent-stabilized homes will no longer dread the latest rent hike, because we will freeze the rent. Getting on a bus without worrying about a fare hike or whether you’ll be able to get to your destination on time will no longer be deemed a small miracle, because we will make those buses fast and free.
These policies are not simply about the costs we make free, but the lives we fill with freedom. For too long in our city, freedom has belonged only to those who can afford to buy it. Our City Hall will change that. These promises carried our movement to City Hall, and they will carry us from the rallying cries of a campaign to the realities of a new era in politics.
Two Sundays ago, as snow softly fell, I spent 12 hours at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, listening to New Yorkers from every borough as they told me about the city that is theirs. We distrust — we discussed construction hours on the Van Wyck Expressway and EBT eligibility, affordable housing for artists, and ICE raids. I spoke to a man named T.J., who said that one day a few years ago, his heart broke as he realized that he would never get ahead here, no matter how hard he worked. I spoke to a Pakistani auntie named Samina, who told me that this movement had fostered something too rare: softness in people’s hearts. As she said to me in Urdu, ”Logon ke dil badal gaye hain.” A hundred and forty-two New Yorkers out of eight-and-a-half million, and yet, if anything united each person sitting across from me, it was the shared recognition that this moment demands a new politics and a new approach to power.
We will deliver nothing less as we work each day to make this city belong to more of its people than it did the day before. Here is what I want you to expect from the administration that this morning moved into the building behind me. We will transform the culture of City Hall from one of “no” to one of “how.” We will answer to all New Yorkers, not to any billionaire or oligarch who thinks they can buy our democracy. We will govern without shame and insecurity, making no apology for what we believe. I was elected as a democratic socialist, and I will govern as a democratic socialist.
AMY GOODMAN: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani giving his inaugural address on New Year’s Day on the steps of City Hall before thousands in subfreezing weather as millions watch worldwide. To see the whole ceremony, everyone’s speeches in full, go to democracynow.org. After the inauguration, the mayor traveled to a Brooklyn housing complex, where he signed three executive orders designed to tackle the city’s housing crisis. Special thanks to Nermeen Shaikh, Hany Massoud, María Taracena, Sam Alcoff, Charina Nadura. I’m Amy Goodman.
