Did you know that Truthout is a nonprofit and independently funded by readers like you? If you value what we do, please support our work with a donation.

If you had told me in September 2001, when I was a new teacher in Washington, D.C. — the smoke from the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon still visible from my classroom window — that one day a Muslim socialist would be elected mayor of New York City, I might have thought you cruel for raising my hopes.

I remember the tanks rolling down the street by my house, the flags unfurled from every porch demanding loyalty. The air was thick with fear and vengeance. Islamophobia became the nation’s unofficial religion. The Patriot Act deputized that hatred, giving the government license to spy on Muslims, to entrap them, to raid homes and mosques under the banner of national security. People were beaten in the streets for wearing a hijab, or for simply being perceived as Muslim — Sikh, Arab, South Asian, anyone who fit the script of American fear. In those years, to call oneself a socialist was to invite exile, and to speak of our shared humanity was to stand accused of disloyalty to the nation.

It was not an easy time to believe in human possibility. Being a young Black socialist who wanted to help build a world based on solidarity was widely understood as a dangerous betrayal. But now, take note: The city once believed to be the sole possession of Wall Street — a city steeped in Islamophobic backlash — has elected a Muslim socialist. History, with its sly grin, has once again mocked despair.

Zohran Mamdani’s victory as the new mayor of New York City has awakened a jubilant spirit among working people daring to dream of a better city and a better world. A candidate who ran in support of Palestine, who stood before the world as an unapologetic Muslim, who named himself an open socialist, and who named the mega-rich as the primary barrier to justice, has accomplished something that once seemed impossible.

Mamdani didn’t just promise relief; he named the forces that made life unaffordable and offered a plan to take them on.

Yet his victory was not a miracle — it was a mandate. In a city where the rent is too damn high and billionaires build empty towers while working families sleep in shelters, Mamdani didn’t just promise relief; he named the forces that made life unaffordable and offered a plan to take them on. He won because tenants believed him, because workers recognized themselves in his campaign, and because the grassroots movement led by the Democratic Socialists of America organized one of the most disciplined, door-to-door mobilizations in New York’s modern history.

His victory also marked a clear rebuke to Donald Trump — and the rising tide of fascism he represents. In an age of fear and manufactured division, New Yorkers chose solidarity over scapegoating. That spirit of resistance did not stop at the city limits. It echoed the defiance of Gaza, where steadfastness amid genocide has awakened the conscience of the world — what Palestinian journalist Bisan Owda calls “the Gaza effect,” the contagion of courage that crosses borders.

The elation surrounding Mamdani’s victory is heightened by the joy that accompanies the fall of Andrew Cuomo — a shill for the 1 percent whose record of protecting the powerful was matched only by his record of sexual harassment and abuse. His defeat marks not just the end of a man, but also the crumbling of a political order that mistook cruelty for competence.

A Campaign Against Elite Capture

Many have found hope in the historic firsts that occasionally punctuate our politics — individuals whose presence has diversified the halls of power and widened the story of who counts as American. There’s no doubt representation can expand the horizons of who sees themselves as included and what people imagine possible. Yet when representation is detached from strategies for collective liberation, it risks becoming another tool of the very order we seek to challenge. The system has learned to decorate itself with diversity while leaving its foundations of inequality intact. This is what Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò calls elite capture: when the language of justice is emptied out and repurposed to serve those already in power.

Mamdani’s victory is something else entirely. He did not run to become only a symbol; he ran to change the conditions of people’s lives. His campaign refused the comfort of representation without redistribution. He called for taxing luxury real estate to fund social housing, canceling medical debt, and placing renewable energy under........

© Truthout