During Sunday’s rally at Forest Hills stadium in Queens, preceded by speeches from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, secured his place among the country’s great socialist stars. In the same stadium where the Beatles had played sixty years earlier, 15,000 people flocked, on an afternoon that grew colder by the hour, starting to line up at 3pm and staying until 9pm, to listen to what is now the most charismatic trio in US politics, chanting Mamdani’s slogan in chorus: New York is not for sale.
It is not common for a local election campaign to fill a stadium and bring international media, even if the city in question is New York. But this is not a normal election campaign, it is a movement. Until now, Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and other democratic socialists elected to public office had drafted laws, pushed the Democratic Party to the left and periodically guided the national political debate. But they had never won an executive position with as much power as that of mayor of New York City, moreover at a time when the White House has a far-right occupant, also a New Yorker. «We are every fascist’s worst nightmare – Ocasio-Cortez said from the stage – We must remember that in a moment like this, we are not the crazy ones, New York City. Are we sane to demand affordable and decent housing, a living wage, the right to healthcare, which we pay to take care of our people, instead of razing Palestinians and oppressed people abroad.”
Before her, comedians, poets and activists had given their testimony, surrounded by signs reading “universal childcare”, “freeze rents” and “make buses fast and free”, the three main points of Mamdani’s dangerous socialist program, all greeted with thunderous applause. Instead, the crowd booed every time Trump was mentioned, especially when Brad Lander, a New York auditor and Mamdani ally, said: “It’s not Donald Trump against Zohran Mamdani, it’s Donald Trump against New Yorkers.”
The super moderate governor of New York Kathy Hochul, who in September gave her endorsement to Mamdani and not to Cuomo, of whom she was deputy, had to receive some boos and reproaches from those who reminded her, shouting at her, that she would have the power to tax the rich. But these boos were taken into account, given that the positions of the 15,000 who gathered were neither centrist nor moderate, but fiercely socialist. «Socialist is no longer a bad word – says Amina, a 58 year old from the Bronx – It should never have been. It means that you are interested in others, in their rights, in their well-being, and not just in what concerns you personally.”
The audience reserved the warmest welcome for the 84-year-old Sanders, who in the evening was in Indiana with Ocasio-Cortez for a rally and to collect an award named after Eugene Debs, the union leader and presidential candidate who Bernie credits with having developed his political vision. “At a time when Americans are extremely concerned about the current state of the nation, economically and politically,” Sanders said, “a victory here in New York will give hope and inspiration to people across our country and around the world.”
Sanders has been waiting for a moment like this since he withdrew from the 2016 primaries. On that occasion he launched his non-profit Our Revolution, with the slogan “campaigns end, a movement remains”, asking his base not to stop with the commitment, but to implement “a political revolution to challenge the power of the plutocrats and give priority to the needs of people and our planet”. The request was accepted by Ocasio-Cortez, as she herself said several times, and her example by Mamdani: «Senator Sanders «dared to fight alone for so long – Mamdani said during the rally – I speak the language of democratic socialism only because he spoke it first». And this was the first rally of all 3 together: «When we launched this campaign a year and three days ago – continued Mamdani – there wasn’t a single camera filming it. My name was a statistical anomaly in every poll. Four months later our support had reached impressive levels: 1%. I was known as ‘other candidates’.”
In turn, all the speakers reminded us that just a few votes are enough to change the outcome of an election (“In Burlington I became mayor by 15 votes,” said Sanders) and urged everyone to get as many people as possible to vote for Send Me. Mamdani’s victory in New York would not only send a message of defiance to Trump, but would reinforce the idea that the socialist model can be replicated across the country.
The event poster displayed on the stage evoked a new troika, with three socialists leading the left wing of the Democratic Party: a Jew, a Christian and a Muslim. But all New Yorkers.