A Softening of Hearts: The Mayor Is Listening

In a new year that promises to be as wretched, rancorous and bloody as the last one - cue oil lust and delusions of empire - we celebrate the stirring hope and promise of newly elected Democratic Socialist and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has embraced diversity, collectivism, and the rare chance to shape "lives we (will) fill with freedom" when for too long "freedom has belonged only to those who can afford to buy it." Lesson for now: (Good) change happens.

Yeah, we know the bad kind does too, like America's heedless, illegal attack on and kidnapping from the sovereign state of Venezuela, "actions of a rogue state" overseen by an addled, clueless, slurring commander-in-chief (sic) making fake claims and struggling to stay upright during his own purportedly exultant news conference on storming "blind into Caracas." Add in preening drunktank bully Hegseth bragging, "America is back!" - to deadly quagmires - and spineless lil' Marco disparaging a country, ostensibly Cuba, "run by incompetent, senile men" - oops - and their brazen disregard of legal mandates to consult with Congress by dismissing that entire, pesky branch of government as "so so weak" - all told, the insane, unschooled act of hubris that is their inevitably catastrophic return to "naked imperialism" is best summed up by James Fallows: "Good God."

Which is why we'd rather bask, at least briefly, in Mamdani's stunning rise, and in the opportunity he represents "to transform and reinvent." "A moment like this comes rarely," he said at his jubilant inauguration, "and rarer still is it the people themselves whose hands are the ones upon the levers of change." Promising to govern "expansively and audaciously," Mamdani, 34, was ceremonially sworn in on New Year's Day by Bernie Sanders, a key political mentor, after taking his official oath the night before from A.G. Letitia James in the City Hall subway station. Both times, he put his hand on two Qurans - one a historic copy from the New York Public Library, and one that belonged to his father. Both times his wife Rama Duwaji, a 28-year-old designer and artist, stood by his side, and he repeatedly underscored themes of unity, equity, diversity and populism.

Mamdani arrived at his inauguration ceremony, not in a limo, but in a motorcade of taxis, a nod to a hunger strike he undertook with cabbies in 2021. In a hat tip to the trains crucial to millions of New Yorkers' daily commutes - in Mamdani's case from Queens - the PA announcer was Bernie Wagenblast, the trans subway system worker whose recorded voice endlessly warns riders, "Please stand away from the platform edge." Mandy Patinkin sang Over the Rainbow with the kids of Staten Island's PS 22 Chorus. Singer-songwriter Lucy Dacus sang the workers'/women's rights anthem Bread and Roses. Along with Bernie, AOC gave a fiery speech - "We have chosen courage over fear" - poet Cornelius Eady performed his poem Proof - "This is our time" - and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, a son of Grenada immigrants, wept as he repeated with the crowd, "I won't lose hope."

In his soaring speech to the raucous crowd, Mamdani insisted again and again that government should work to improve people’s lives, that its job is to meet the needs of the many not the elite few, that New York, "this gorgeous mosaic," belongs to its people, all of whom deserve an equal share in its governance. "I was elected as a Democratic Socialist, and I will govern as a Democratic Socialist," he said. "Here, where the language of the New Deal was born, we will return the vast resources of this city to everyday people...Construction workers in steel-toed boots and halal cart vendors whose knees ache from working all day," "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."

He also stressed, whatever their vote or politics, "If you are a New Yorker, I am your Mayor. Regardless of whether we agree, I will protect you, celebrate with you, mourn alongside you, and never, not for a second, hide from you." Eloquently, he vowed, "Together, we will tell a new story of our city," summoning neither "a tale of one city, governed by the 1%" nor "a tale of two cities, rich versus poor." "It will be a tale of eight-and-a-half million cities, (each) a universe, (each) woven together...The authors of this story" will speak Mandarin, Yiddish, Creole; will pray in mosques, shuls, churches or not at all; will be Russian Jews, Italians, Irish, black homeowners who triumphed over longtime redlining, young people in apartments whose "walls shake when the subway passes," and, drawing cheers, Palestinians "who will no longer have to contend with a politics that speaks of universalism and then makes them the exception."

On his first work day, he visited a rent-stabilized building to announce three executive orders aimed at improving/creating affordable housing: A Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants facing off against landlords and two task forces - to review city properties flippable into affordable, and to identify/eliminate regulatory roadblocks to building new housing. From the start, Mamdani's campaign boasted a singular accessibility, from his inaugural, hilarious street video - he holds a "Let's Talk Election" sign as many troop past him or report they voted for Trump - to his walking the 13-mile length of Manhattan "because New Yorkers deserve a Mayor they can hear, see and even yell at if they need to. We out here." A couple of weeks ago, already elected, he kept up that tradition with a 12-hourThe Mayor Is Listening event, inviting his wildly diverse constituents to sit down and tell him what's on their minds.

Ultimately, 144 of them did, sitting across from him at the Museum of the Moving Image, often with their kids, to tell him of their hopes and fears - cuts in Medicaid and mental health services, subways that don't feel safe, busses that don't run when they need them after work, students who spend hours on busses, floods and heat, changing migratory patterns of birds, the need to "put fresh food in front of New Yorkers," especially tomatoes, the "stain on the city" that is Riker's Island, the retaliation tenants face for speaking up, the sweeps homeless people endure only to return to the same spot four hours later having lost all their stuff, the terror, nightmares, sense of impotence around ICE, like "an attack on the entire city." One tearful woman, "I dream of being taken away, being sent to a foreign country, not seeing my mother and my baby brother again. Please protect people like me."

Many spoke of affordability, or its lack: People whose families lived for generations in neighborhoods they had to leave, who can't find a place with their new baby, who've spent decades in an apartment but now fear being homeless, who can barely afford groceries: "It's a punchline to buy anything here." A single mother asks how universal child care would work. "It's for everyone," he says gently. "Like public schools." A queer, asylum-seeking Russian, having lost her country, hasn't yet felt part of her new city or its "spaces of power" until now, with him, and starts to cry. Samina, a woman from Pakistan, thanks him carefully, softly, almost whispering, for his empathy: "When I go outside, I see happiness on people's faces, hope, light. You have changed people's hearts, you have created a softening in their hearts. Please continue to be our light and hope in this difficult time." He smiles, thanks her, grasps her hand. She leaves, he weeps.

He listens, nods, scribbles notes on a small pad, laughs at the tomatoes, promises to strengthen sanctuary policies to have no police "collusion" with ICE. He thanks a seven-year-old boy for worrying about homeless people, hugs the Russian woman who says she is excited for the first time about politics, nods he too is troubled by the accelerating climate crisis. At the end of the long, rich day, he is asked how he feels: "That was a lovely, lovely day. I feel like my cup is full with what New Yorkers have shared with me." He notes their breadth of interests, their fluency in the issues, "the reality of the stakes they live with every day." "These are people who give themselves to the city, and they rarely get much back," he says. "This is why we try so hard. It was beautiful. The bravery was incredible."