“I Will Govern as a Democratic Socialist”

How cold it was in City Hall Park that morning in New York…111th or 112th mayor” Was it the inauguration? So cold that I had to keep putting the pen back in my pocket to keep the ink from freezing. So cold that Public Advocate Jumaan Williams, waiting on the dais for the hearing to begin, was visibly shaking – although he, like Comptroller Mark Levine and the mayor-elect (and former Mayor Bill de Blasio, also at the podium), remained bareheaded throughout.

By then Bernie Wagenblast— better known, she noted, as the voice urging commuters to “get off the edge of the platform” — introduced Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez to kick off the program, many of the tens of thousands of people who had gathered for what was billed as a “free community party” on the streets south of City Hall Square and who had waited in the cold for more than three hours, jumping from foot to foot just to keep the movement going. However, only a few left early.

And once New York Attorney General Letitia James, herself a target of President Donald Trump's vindictive Justice Department and who officially swore in Zoran Mamdani at the stroke of midnight (and wisely kept warm in a camel coat and matching beret), swore in Levin, the themes of the day—and the new administration—began to emerge.

The first was an affirmation that diversity is New York's secret weapon. How Levin noticed“Today we have three oaths: one by the leader using the Koran, one by the leader using the Christian Bible, and one by the leader using the Chumash, or Hebrew Bible.” Levine, who spoke briefly in Spanish, Hebrew and Greek as well as English, noted that “while our city is thriving for the people at the top, it is getting harder and harder for working families.”

The second theme was that New York must maintain—and celebrate and protect—its status as aMother of Exiles” As Williams, himself the son of Grenadian migrants, put it, reminded the crowd“This celebration at City Hall is just a few blocks away from the mourning at Federal Plaza.” Williams was introduced by actor and producer Amadou Lee, whose own odyssey from illegal immigrant from Senegal to U.S. citizenship is the subject of first page New York Times story 2006— now seems like a relic of a lost era. But then Williams appealed to the Grenadian revolutionary Maurice Bishop, who “entered the fight for “radical” socialist ideals such as housing, health care and education.” It was Bishop, Williams said, who declared that “revolutionaries have no right to be cowards.” Both officials who preceded him agreed with Mamdani's message that for New York to truly belong to the people who live here, the city must become more accessible.

It was Bernie Sanders who managed to tone down the rising rhetoric that day: reminding crowd: “In the richest country in the history of the world, making sure people can live in affordable housing is not radical… Providing free, quality child care is not radical. Countries around the world have been doing this for years.” However, there is no denying the historic nature of Mamdani's victory and the truly radical expectations that this victory generated.

When the Vermont senator also tried to point out that “demanding that the rich and big corporations start paying their fair share of taxes” wasn't as radical as Sanders did either often noted elsewhereUnder Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, the marginal tax rate on the richest Americans was 92 percent – crowd flared up to chants of “Tax the rich!” Mamdani just smiled, but as anyone within sight of one of the many Jumbotrons around City Hall could see, his wife, Rama Duvaji, was fortified by the cold that New York Times described like a “statement coat,” nodded approvingly.

As for the new mayor, he began by delivering the same blend of lofty rhetoric and clever semiology that carried him from less than 1 percent in the polls to his victories in September (the elections that usually decide issues in this largely Democratic city) and November. Call “New Yorkers are watching from cramped kitchens in Flushing and barber shops in East New York, from cell phones leaning against the dashboards of parked taxis in LaGuardia, from hospitals in Mott Haven and libraries in El Barrio that for too long have known only neglect,” Mamdani said he stood next to “every person who, day after day, makes choices even when it seems impossible.” call our city home.”

Those watching hoping for a turn to the center – a signal that while, as a politician from an earlier generation once remarked, “you campaign in poetry, you govern in prose” and that now it was time to start lowering expectations – must have walked away deeply disappointed:

Too often in our past, moments of great opportunity were quickly succumbed to weak imagination and lesser ambition. What was promised was never fulfilled; what could have been changed remained the same. For the New Yorkers who most want to see our city anew, the burden has only gotten heavier and the wait has only gotten longer.

He continued:

I was told that this was an opportunity to reset expectations, that I should use this opportunity to encourage New Yorkers to ask for less and expect even less. I won't do anything like that. The only expectation I strive to change is small expectations.

Starting today, we will govern expansively and boldly. We can't always succeed. But we will never be accused of not having the courage to try.

And finally, to remove all doubts:

I was elected as a democratic socialist, and I will govern as a democratic socialist. I will not give up my principles for fear of being considered radical. As the great senator from Vermont once said, “What is radical is a system that gives so much to so few and deprives so many of the basic necessities of life.”

To what my late friend Paul Du Brule and former colleague Jack Newfield called “the city.”permanent government“, these are fighting words. The last democratic socialist to rise to power at City Hall was David Dinkins (as well as Mamdani, a dues-paying DSA member). I was there when he was sworn in, too, and remember the high hopes raised by his statement that “we are all foot soldiers on the march to freedom.” his vision “a magnificent mosaic of race and religious belief, national origin and sexual orientation of people whose families arrived here yesterday and generations ago, through Ellis Island or Kennedy Airport or on buses to the Port Authority.” Dinkins also promised to create an administration that “will champion and advance justice around the world.”

This was 35 years ago. And while Mamdani name-checked his Democratic Socialist predecessor—along with de Blasio and Fiorello LaGuardia—only one of those mayors is widely considered successful. And LaGuardia had an ally in the White House, and Mamdani… was completely different.

Yet even as he raised expectations, Mamdani acknowledged that only by fulfilling those promises in government could he deliver on his promise to lead a city that “belongs to everyone who lives in it.”

For now, it's worth noting that he's off to a good start, and that in the fight ahead, our new mayor has not only his own considerable resources of intellect, charisma and political resilience, but also an army of eager followers – tens of thousands of them – who defied the cold on Thursday just as they defied expectations in November.

Gov. Kathy Hochul, whose cooperation will be critical in securing financial resources for Mamdani's ambitious program of urban renewal and public sector revitalization, must have looked at the crowds filling the stretch of lower Broadway known as the Canyon of Heroes with a mixture of admiration and envy.