As you actually know, Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York final Tuesday. Certainly, in case your life is like mine, you could really feel you’ve been listening to about little else. The opposite day, as I used to be biking my youthful child to high school, a younger man pulled up subsequent to us with a kind of moveable audio system that some folks like to make use of to blast music whereas biking. Besides he wasn’t blasting music, however some sort of information commentary present discussing how Mamdani received. Really, you’ll be able to’t get away from it.
In my opinion, prior to now couple weeks I’ve been on three totally different panels and carried out 4 interviews on the Mamdani coverage agenda. Two of the panels weren’t recorded, however I assumed I’d share the opposite one and three of the interviews. (The fourth doesn’t appear to have aired but.) Maybe you continue to are searching for Mamdani content material, maybe particularly if it’s centered on the challenges of operating the town than the election itself. And presumably in case you are studying this you may have some curiosity in my perspective. You may take heed to them, I suppose, whilst you’re cooking, or exercising, or in your automotive, or from a transportable speaker in your bike, or gathered your loved ones across the pc with mugs of heat cider — nevertheless you favor to devour your audiovisual content material.
The primary one, from October 14, is a roundtable organized by Dissent, with me, the indefatigable tenant organizer and housing advocate Cea Weaver, and Metropolis Councilmember Chi Ossé, one other rising star of the New York left. This was an amazing dialog, with, although you’ll be able to’t see it within the video, an enthusiastic and largely fairly younger viewers — very totally different from the group you used to count on at a Dissent occasion.
Additionally from mid-October, is a podcast interview with the Swedish researcher Max Jerneck (there’s a quick introduction in Swedish, which you’ll skip except you occur to talk it.). It’s an extended dialog, which covers quite a lot of floor: the primary 50 minutes are on Zohran, then there’s 10 or quarter-hour on Trumpism, and the final 20 minutes or so are about In opposition to Cash. This was a pleasant mixture from my perspective, because it was a possibility to attempt to hyperlink the arguments within the guide, that are largely at a reasonably summary degree, with extra speedy political questions. There’s additionally a YouTube model, if you wish to see me gesticulating; if I’d identified he was posting the video, I might have cleaned up my dwelling workplace first. The YouTube model additionally helps you to see this humorous image Max pulled from the Nobel Prize Committee’s writeup of this 12 months’s winners, which makes “family financial savings” actually the driving motor of development — a pleasant instance of the conceptual framework that the guide is making an attempt to assist free us from.
Put up-election, right here is an interview with Sasha Linden Cohen on the present Background Briefing. Amongst different issues, we speak in regards to the politics and economics of free (and quick!) buses. Maybe the important thing level to make there’s that it is a extra widespread coverage than you would possibly assume. For instance, right here (by way of Doug Henwood) is an advert within the Monetary Occasions from the federal government of Luxembourg, touting their free transit system.
It’s value emphasizing right here, additionally, that considered one of Zohran’s accomplishments within the legislature was making a pilot program with one free bus line in every borough. To date, this has been fairly profitable, with ridership on the free strains up by a few third in contrast with different strains, and no signal that they’re cannibalizing service from different components of the system. If one votes for a pilot program — as giant majorities in each homes of the legislature did right here — it’s presumably as a result of adopting the thought typically appears no less than believable.
A second post-election interview was with Brian Edwards-Tiekert on UpFront on KPFA, the place I’m a considerably common visitor. (I come on about 33 minutes in.) On this one, we speak extra in regards to the marketing campaign itself — each the group of it, and the marketing campaign as a cultural phenomenon. We additionally speak fairly a bit about his housing program (which can also be the main focus of the Dissent roundtable), and about what sort of cooperation may be anticipated from state authorities.
One level I made right here, which I feel has been underappreciated by this entire marketing campaign, is how a lot nationwide Democratic like Schumer and Jeffries are not typical of New York’s Democratic officers. Even within the main, Zohran Mamdani received extra endorsements from the Metropolis Council than Cuomo did. By the final election, virtually each vital metropolis and state elected Democrat was with him. (His last pre-election rally, the place the state’s prime three officers served because the warm-up act for Bernie Sanders and AOC, drove this dwelling.) This doesn’t imply that there received’t be severe resistance to his agenda — particularly insofar because it entails elevating taxes on the wealthy — however I feel it’s a mistake to think about an ideologically coherent “institution” opposing him. I feel quite a lot of Democrats proper now, together with many self-identified centrists, are under no circumstances positive what they need to be doing on this second, and could be joyful to get behind a Zohran-type program if it appears like a winner. Chuck Schumer might see his primary job as “to maintain the left pro-Israel,” however Kathy Hochul assuredly doesn’t.
Lastly, right here’s an sudden interview from Election Day. Whereas I used to be out with the children on one final get-out-the-vote canvass, we had been stopped by somebody doing video interviews for her YouTube channel (due to course we had been, that is 2025). I wasn’t ready to do a lot with this platform, however the children actually rose to the event.
