Forgot Your Password?

New to The Nation? Subscribe

Print subscriber? Activate your online access

.nation-small__b{fill:#fff;}

An Irish Rebel Socialist Is Stirring Up New York City Politics

Why Zohran Mamdani and Claire Valdez are quoting James Connolly.

A mural in Belfast depicting James Connolly.

Zohran Mamdani memorably began his election-night victory speech by announcing, “The sun may have set over our city this evening, but as Eugene Debs once said: “I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.”

That reference to Debs—the heroic railroad union leader, socialist icon, and five-time presidential candidate—drew cheers from Mamdani’s supporters. They understood it as a signal that the newly elected mayor of New York City was serious about his democratic socialist politics. They also understood it as a sign that, like Deb’s Socialist Party, which elected members of Congress, mayors, and legislators in states across the country, Mamdani was serious about putting government on the side of the working class.

Mamdani, who, like many of those who were cheering, is a member of New York City’s surging Democratic Socialists of America movement, chose the right quote at the right moment on that November night. And he did so, again, shortly before St. Patrick’s Day, when he attended a luncheon hosted by the James Connolly Irish American Labor Coalition—a group named for the radical labor leader who is remembered 110 years after his execution by the British as an unflinching champion of Irish independence and a proud socialist campaigner for overturning the rule of “capitalists, landlords and financiers.”

The mayor spoke in the language of the group he was addressing, quoting Connolly’s epic declaration: “The cause of labor is the cause of Ireland and the cause of Ireland is that cause of labor.”

Several days later, Mamdani took some hits for replying cautiously to a question about whether he embraced Connolly’s vision of a united Ireland. “I gotta be honest,” he said, I haven’t thought enough on that question.”

But the mayor came back on St. Patrick’s Day itself with a more robust response, explaining that “as someone who believes deeply in the principle of self-determination…I think that should also be extended to the Irish.” Most people took that to mean that Mamdani supports the push to hold a referendum on whether the six counties of Northern Ireland should be taken out of the hands of the British and reunited with the 26 counties of the Republic of Ireland. That’s not some far-off prospect; the leader of Ireland’s Sinn Féin party, Mary Lou McDonald, has been calling for “proposals for delivering legal, fair and decisive referenda and a negotiated timeframe by the end of this decade.”

Mamdani then issued a St. Patrick’s Day video in which he hailed Irish solidarity with anti-colonial struggles in Africa, the fight against apartheid in South Africa, and the cause of Palestinian freedom.

“Irish solidarity is no coincidence, as it was on Irish soil that the British Empire developed their........

© The Nation