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ZOHRAN MAMDANI: “OUR TIME IS NOW”  
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Zohran Mamdani
October 14, 2025
Jacobin
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_ Monday night at a campaign rally, Zohran Mamdani addressed his
supporters: “For too long, we have tried not to lose. Now, it is
time that we win...We are an existential threat to billionaires who
think their money can buy our democracy." _

Dave Sanders for The New York Times,

 

_Monday night at a rally at the United Palace, socialist Democratic
nominee for New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani addressed his
supporters. We reprint his speech here in full._

Thank you to the elected officials, labor and movement leaders here
with us tonight. And thank you to New York’s Attorney General Tish
James. For years, you have fought the good fight for New Yorkers, and
now it’s our time to fight for you.

There is something special in this room tonight. It’s power. It’s
the power of hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers united, ready to
usher in a new day. It is the power of a movement that won the battle
over the soul of the Democratic Party. That put Andrew Cuomo’s
vision of austerity and smallness firmly where it belongs: on a ballot
line no one’s ever heard of.

It is power larger than any single person working together for a New
York where dignity is delivered to all.

And it is the power of a campaign that for the second time in five
months stands on the precipice of victory. Three weeks from tomorrow,
we will win again.

That is only possible because of you. This campaign has built the
largest volunteer effort of any in New York City history. There are
3,200 people in this theater tonight. And alongside all of you, there
are over 80,000 more across our city — in Brownsville, in
Parkchester, in Flushing, and right here in Washington Heights, New
Yorkers who have knocked doors, phone banked, and registered voters
day after day, week after week, month after month. You have worked
this hard for one simple reason: to fundamentally reimagine what is
possible in New York City.

Now, there are some who oppose that vision. Billionaires like Bill
Ackman and Ronald Lauder have poured millions of dollars into this
race because they say that we pose an existential threat.

And I am here to admit something. They are right.

We are an existential threat to billionaires who think their money can
buy our democracy.

We are an existential threat to a broken status quo that buries the
voices of working people beneath corporations.

And we are an existential threat to a New York where a hard day’s
work isn’t enough to earn you a good night’s rest.

And we are absolutely an existential threat to disgraced politicians
like Andrew Cuomo, who diminish public trust, harass women, and are
unabashed in their desperation to collaborate with Donald Trump and
his donors.

We are an existential threat to billionaires who think their money can
buy our democracy.

Let me be clear. This is not a moment for capitulation. We are in a
period of political darkness. Donald Trump and his ICE agents are
snatching our immigrant neighbors from our city in broad daylight,
right before our eyes. His authoritarian administration is waging a
scorched-earth campaign of retribution against any who dared oppose
them, against the courts that dare hold them accountable, and against
our trans and queer neighbors for simply daring to be themselves.

And again and again, Trump has broken the promise he made to the
American people that he would fight for the working class by taking on
the cost-of-living crisis. Over the last nine months, we have
witnessed the largest wealth transfer from the poor to the rich in
history.

Trump is like Andrew Cuomo: beholden to billionaires and oligarchs.
And like Cuomo, he has bent to their will.

The decimation left in his wake has been staggering. Tens of millions
of Americans, including millions right here in New York, will lose
their Medicaid, their Medicare, their SNAP benefits. Because of
Trump’s corruption, children will go to sleep hungry. The sick will
die. Any way you measure it, our lives have gotten worse.

I think of the pastor I sat with just a few weeks ago in East
Flatbush. He told me how in September, a young woman from his
congregation approached him after church. She told him she was facing
a deportation order. He knew her well, and he knew the work she did
with young people with disabilities in this city. She told him she
couldn’t afford an attorney and had no one else. She asked if he
would go with her to 26 Federal Plaza. He said yes.

Sitting in the courtroom, the judge told her to be ready to leave in
the clothes she was wearing. He asked her if she had said goodbye to
her family. She began to cry.

And then, in what felt like a miracle, the judge changed his mind. He
decided he would put her Temporary Protected Status order before the
deportation order. For a minute, it seemed as if the danger had
passed.

But the pastor knew that ICE stood outside. They did not care about a
court order, because they do not care about the rule of law.

He turned to a few court watchers in the room and asked them to go
outside first. He asked another man to hold the elevator. He picked up
the young woman under her arms, opened the doors, rushed her past ICE
agents into the elevator, and down into a waiting car before speeding
off back to Brooklyn.

Through it all, her feet had never even touched the ground. He told me
that it felt like the Underground Railroad. And still, he knew she was
anything but safe.

 
Attendees hold signs during the rally at United Palace.  (Photo:
Christian Monterrosa / Bloomberg  //  Jacobin)
We are living in the times that we read about. I know that for many of
us when we look back at moments in history that rhyme with today,
where tyranny loomed and the state imposed violence with sinister
glee, we ask ourselves what we would have done. We need not wonder.
That time is now.

And I am proud to look out onto this crowd, at New Yorkers who, amidst
this despair, have continued to believe in a world better than this.
With every block walked, every petition signature earned, you have
refused to normalize a politics of cruelty, of greed, of exploitation.
You have asserted your power.

We see that power when nurses and teachers and bus drivers, the
hardworking men and women of organized labor, finish their shifts and
go straight to a canvass launch.

We see it when the same New Yorkers who walk to work dedicate their
weekends to fighting for fast and free buses for strangers they will
never meet.

And we see it when grandparents whose children have long grown into
adulthood fight on behalf of universal childcare so that a young
family they’ve never met on the other side of the city can afford to
stay here.

With this much darkness, it takes courage to light a new path. As
Thomas Sankara once said, “Fundamental change only comes from the
courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent
the future.” Together, that is exactly what we have done.

For too long, we have been told to be satisfied with abstractions and
strongly worded letters; to be content with a politics built atop a
flimsy foundation of only that which we are against, without ever
declaring what we are actually for; to accept leaders who would sell
us out to the highest bidder.

We believe in the wealthiest city in the wealthiest nation in the
history of the world that working people deserve a dignified life.

That is not what this movement is, nor will it ever be. We know what
we are for, and we will not cower. A movement by the people and for
the people answers only to the people.

So with twenty-two days until the polls close, let us say what we
believe loudly and clearly for the world to know. We believe in the
wealthiest city in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world
that working people deserve a dignified life.

We believe that buses should be fast and [_crowd yells_: “free!”]

We believe that housing is far too expensive. We’re going to build
hundreds of thousands of affordable homes, take on bad landlords, and
freeze the [_crowd yells_: “rent!”]

And we believe that day care shouldn’t cost as much as a year’s
tuition at City College. That’s why we’re going to deliver
universal [_crowd yells_: “childcare!”]

These are not just slogans. These are commitments. We say them not
simply to inspire but because it is what we will deliver. We believe
in schools that receive the investments they need, infrastructure made
resilient to the growing effects of the climate crisis, and a budget
that fully funds our parks and libraries.

We believe in public safety that actually delivers safety and justice.
We can make this a city where no one is afraid to walk the streets or
take the subway. A city where our police officers focus on serious
crimes, and it is mental health professionals that address the mental
health crisis.

For too long, we have tried not to lose. Now, it is time that we win.

In New York, we believe in standing up for those that we love. Over
the last nine months, we have watched the man with the most power in
the world expend enormous energy targeting those with the least.
Whether you are an immigrant, a member of the trans community, one of
the many black women that Donald Trump has fired from a federal job, a
single mom still waiting for the cost of groceries to go down, or
anyone else with their back against the wall, your struggle is ours
too.

Make no mistake, ours is a movement where we know exactly who and what
we are fighting for. We are not afraid of our own ideas. For too long,
we have tried not to lose. Now, it is time that we win.

I know that since we won on June 24, there have been some who have
questioned whether what we aspire towards is possible. Whether the
young people they speak of as the future could also be the present.
Whether a Left that has critiqued could also be the Left that
delivers.

To that, my friends, I have a very simple answer: yes.

And to those who doubt, who cannot quite believe, who share our vision
but fear allowing themselves to hope, I ask you: When has dignity ever
been given?

The same questions asked of us were asked of organized labor, were
asked of the civil rights movement, were asked of any who had the
nerve to demand a future they could not yet see: Could they not wait?
Could they not see that they were asking too much?

They knew that we do not get to determine the scale of the crisis that
we face. We only get to decide how we respond. We know that every
great victory must be won because it will never be given.

When organized labor won the weekend, so that working people would
have time to rest — that was power won, not given. When those who
came before us marched for voting rights and civil rights, they
triumphed because they dared to dream, not because they were given
permission by a political establishment content with the status quo.

When millions of seniors were lifted from lives of poverty with Social
Security, that’s because Americans were sick of a bad deal and
wanted a new one instead. And the New York we love was made by those
who refuse to settle for less. Great leaders like Fiorella La Guardia
taught us that aspiration is something to embrace, not something that
we treat as a crime. When we shake loose the shackles of small
expectations, our city builds parks and hospitals, and we show the
world that ambition and compassion are in fact intertwined.

We are not afforded the luxury of waiting. Because too often to wait
is to trust those who delivered us to this point.

In an age of darkness, New York can be the light. And we can prove
once and for all that the politics we practice need not be one of
either fear or mediocrity. That power and principle need not live in
conflict in city hall. For we will use our power to transform the
principled into the possible.

In twelve days, New Yorkers will begin to cast their ballots. We will
vote for our next mayor. But more than that, we will make a very
simple choice.

A choice between democracy and oligarchy. A choice between a city you
can afford or more of the same. A choice between a mayor who works for
those straining to afford groceries or those straining to buy an
election. A choice between the hope of a brighter future and a broken
past.

For years, in the words of Dr Martin Luther King, we have been asked
to wait for a more convenient season. We have been told that change is
not yet quite possible, that it’s not yet our turn, that it will
come soon enough.

We’ve been told to wait as our friends and neighbors have moved
away. Told to wait as our city has only grown harder to afford. Told
to wait as a good life has drifted out of reach.

My friends, we are not afforded the luxury of waiting. Because too
often to wait is to trust those who delivered us to this point.

We can demand a government that makes our lives better. We can tell
billionaires that this city doesn’t just belong to them. We can tell
Donald Trump he cannot buy this election. And we can tell Andrew Cuomo
that New York City is not for sale.

So on the evening of November 4, when the world learns that we have
won again, they will know our answer to the question, we choose the
future. Because for all those who say our time is coming, my friends,
our time is now.

_[ZOHRAN MAMDANI represents New York’s 36th district in the state
assembly.]_

_Jacobin‘s fall issue, “Borders,” is out now. Follow this link
to get a discounted subscription to our beautiful print quarterly.
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* Zohran Mamdani
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* New York City mayoral election
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* 2025 Elections
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* New York City
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* DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
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* Democratic Party
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* Left Politics
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* left political strategy
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* Local Government
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* local elections
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* Andrew Cuomo
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* DSA
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* Democratic Socialists of America
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