As you actually know, Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York final Tuesday. Certainly, in case your life is like mine, chances are you’ll 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 individuals 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.
Personally, up to now couple weeks I’ve been on three totally different panels and accomplished 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 in search of Mamdani content material, maybe particularly if it’s targeted on the challenges of operating the town than the election itself. And presumably if you’re studying this you have got some curiosity in my perspective. You can hearken 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 laptop with mugs of heat cider — nonetheless 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 ideal dialog, with, although you’ll be able to’t see it within the video, an enthusiastic and principally fairly younger viewers — very totally different from the group you used to anticipate 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 be able to skip until 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 Towards Cash. This was a pleasant mixture from my perspective, because it was a chance to attempt to hyperlink the arguments within the e book, that are principally at a reasonably summary degree, with extra instant political questions. There’s additionally a YouTube model, if you wish to see me gesticulating; if I’d recognized he was posting the video, I’d have cleaned up my residence workplace first. The YouTube model additionally permits you to see this humorous image Max pulled from the Nobel Prize Committee’s writeup of this yr’s winners, which makes “family financial savings” actually the driving motor of development — a pleasant instance of the conceptual framework that the e book is attempting to assist free us from.
Submit-election, right here is an interview with Sasha Linden Cohen on the present Background Briefing. Amongst different issues, we discuss in regards to the politics and economics of free (and quick!) buses. Maybe the important thing level to make there may be that this can be a extra widespread coverage than you would possibly suppose. For instance, right here (by way of Doug Henwood) is an advert within the Monetary Instances from the federal government of Luxembourg, touting their free transit system.
It’s value emphasizing right here, additionally, that one in all Zohran’s accomplishments within the legislature was making a pilot program with one free bus line in every borough. Thus far, this has been fairly profitable, with ridership on the free traces up by a couple of third in contrast with different traces, 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 concept usually appears at the very least 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 discuss extra in regards to the marketing campaign itself — each the group of it, and the marketing campaign as a cultural phenomenon. We additionally discuss fairly a bit about his housing program (which can be the main focus of the Dissent roundtable), and about what sort of cooperation will be anticipated from state authorities.
One level I made right here, which I believe has been underappreciated by way of this complete 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 acquired extra endorsements from the Metropolis Council than Cuomo did. By the overall election, nearly each essential metropolis and state elected Democrat was with him. (His closing pre-election rally, the place the state’s high three officers served because the warm-up act for Bernie Sanders and AOC, drove this residence.) This doesn’t imply that there received’t be severe resistance to his agenda — particularly insofar because it includes elevating taxes on the wealthy — however I believe it’s a mistake to think about an ideologically coherent “institution” opposing him. I believe quite a lot of Democrats proper now, together with many self-identified centrists, are in no way positive what they need to be doing on this second, and can be completely happy to get behind a Zohran-type program if it appears to be like 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 surprising 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.