Hope is Alive

“Hope is alive,” he declared to a couple of thousand people gathered last night at the Brooklyn Paramount Theatre. He had just been confirmed as the mayor-elect of New York City. His words changed the tone of what otherwise might have been a conventional election night in America.

He spoke with clarity and conviction; delivering a powerful, unflinching victory speech. It contrasted sharply with the empty platitudes offered just moments earlier in two other victory speeches, delivered by two other Democrats in Virginia and New Jersey.

Zohran Mamdani’s speech was different because he is different. His speech wasn’t a politician nodding to donors, but the leader of a movement finally taking a breath after a hard fought, historic campaign for change (as I previewed here five months ago).

He said that New Yorkers could finally exhale because they had chosen “hope over big money and small ideas.”

New York City, breathe this moment in. We have held our breath for longer than we know.

We have held it in anticipation of defeat, held it because the air has been knocked out of our lungs too many times to count, held it because we cannot afford to exhale.

Thanks to all of those who sacrificed so much. We are breathing in the air of a city that has been reborn.

- Zohran Mamdani

He continued, “we won because we insisted that no longer would politics be something that is done to us: now it is something that we do.”

Perhaps the most powerful section of his speech – the final flourish of campaign poetry before the prose of governing – came when he spoke about political power being held in the hands of ordinary New Yorkers:

For as long as we can remember, the working people of New York have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands.

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.

Tonight, against all odds, we have grasped it. The future is in our hands. My friends, we have toppled a political dynasty.

- Zohran Mamdani

When Mamdani finished speaking, an immediate rebuke came from across the East River. It signalled a major part of the challenge that awaits him when he takes office in January. Because the biggest obstacle Mamdani faces isn’t conservative opponents, but those within his own party’s establishment who continue to refuse to support him.

Clutching their pearls over in CNN’s Manhattan studio, David Axelrod and Van Jones slammed the tone of Mamdani’s speech. They preferred the hollow clichés offered earlier in the evening by governors-elect Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill in Virginia and New Jersey. The pundits preferred continuation of the status quo.

But the CNN reaction provided the surest sign that Mamdani had struck the right chord. Indeed, that he was pitch perfect.

The distance between that Brooklyn stage and that Manhattan studio desk says so much about how power – and imagination – is shifting in politics right now. Not just U.S. politics, but in post-industrialised societies across the world.

When CNN disapproves of your speech, you’re probably saying the right things. You’re probably speaking to the people who matter most. And they are calling for change. Long overdue change, as Mamdani noted last night: “Years from now, may our only regret be that this day took so long to come.”

Now the real battle begins …

Mamdani Momentum

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