Zohran Mamdani’s win a beacon of hope for a better world

The election of Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) member Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old person of colour, with an Asian and Muslim background, as mayor of New York City is a great victory for socialists all around the world.

This win is all the more remarkable because it was achieved in spite of relentless opposition from the ruling elite and hysterical accusations of “antisemitism” after he made it clear he opposed Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Mamdani’s win demonstrates that, even in the world’s richest country run by extremist right-winger President Donald Trump, ordinary people are turning to socialist solutions in the face of the horrors of capitalist greed on steroids.

Trump and his fellow billionaires have used the military to terrorise people at home and abroad, and impose policies to make themselves even richer. Trump’s far-right Make America Great Again has also unleashed a tsunami of racism, misogyny and violent imperial arrogance. They have trampled the environment and abandoned any pretence of respect for international law and humanitarian values.

Mamdani’s win was a popular rejection of the “the politics that abandons the many, and only answers to the few”, as Mamdani put it in his stirring victory speech.

As his election victory was announced, the Democratic Socialists of America’s watch party, attended by core volunteers, exploded into applause and started chanting: “Tax the rich!”

Trump labelled Mamdani a “communist” and threatened to cut funding to New York City if he won. Yet, more than a million people (50.4%) voted for him.

This was a resounding popular vote. “Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching,” Mamdani said, “I've got four words for you: Turn the volume up!” He also warned Trump: “To get to any of us, you have to get through all of us.”

“In this new age that we make for ourselves, we will refuse to allow those who traffic in division and hate to pit us against one another,” Mamdani said.

“Here we believe in standing up for those we love, 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.”

Mamdani indentified the billionaire class as being behind a “new darkness that has descended on this country”.

“Tens of millions of dollars have been spent to redefine reality and to convince our neighbours that this new age is something that should frighten them. As has so often occurred, the billionaire class has sought to convince those who are making $30 an hour that their enemies are those earning $20 an hour. They want the people to fight amongst ourselves, so that we remain destructed from the work of remaking a long-broken system.

“We refuse to let them dictate the rules of the game anymore … We can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves.”

Mamdani will face real political challenges as Mayor of New York from the corporate elite and the capitalist state apparatus.

The US Financial Times reminded its shaken up constituency of the state power they still retained, despite Mamdani’s election.

It quoted Sid Davidoff, an adviser to a former NYC mayor, John Lindsay: “The city is a creature of the state. The mayor’s powers are substantial but they are limited by what the state allows him.”

Because much of NYC’s funding comes from state and federal governments, he said: “One governor said to me, ‘the mayor can’t flush the toilet unless I tell him’.”

Mamdani will also have to battle the pro-capitalist and pro-war power brokers in the Democratic Party under whose banner he contested the election. His main opponent was fellow Democrat Andrew Cuomo, who he beat in the preselection. Cuomo then ran as an independent.

The struggle between the left and the right within the Democratic Party, which started with independent Senator Bernie Sanders’ nearly successful presidential preselection campaign in 2016, will intensify and, undoubtedly, be part of how Mamdani’s mayoral term, beginning in January 2026, unfolds.

Perhaps more important is the boost Mamdani’s win could give to the left outside the alternative party of the capitalist class. The DSA looks set for another round of meteoric growth.

Another incredible achievement of his campaign has been the level of grassroots mobilisation; more than 100,000 volunteers made the campaign a success. A broad coalition of organisations was also involved, but the DSA was the driving force behind it.

This powerful grassroots movement will have to keep mobilising to ensure that Mamdani’s platform of progressive solutions is carried out.

These solutions include freezing the rents of more than two million New Yorkers, cheap groceries through public-owned supermarkets, making bus travel free and providing free childcare for children between six weeks to five years old.

Mamdani also promised to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes, in line with the International Criminal Court call. This has reportedly prompted the Israeli government to consider closing its consulate in New York.

Because we are coming out of decades of working class defeats and retreats, all around the world, Mamdani’s election has given hope to millions of people struggling for a better world.

We will learn valuable lessons from Mamdani’s campaign and the coming struggle to implement its platform of progressive reforms. That will make our movement stronger too.

Now is a very good time to be a socialist and make a real difference with others in shaping our common future for the better.

Help us build a stronger socialist movement by joining Socialist Alliance today.

[Peter Boyle is a member of the Socialist Alliance National Executive.]