A Tectonic Shift Signalling the ‘Spring of Hope’
The poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty overlooking the New York harbour is Emma Lazarus's “The New Colossus”, which begins with “Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, / With conquering limbs astride from land to land; / Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand / A mighty woman with a torch...” The poem concludes with the iconic lines, “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
That spirit was under the jackboots of resurgent ultra-right-wing economics and politics post 2008. Today, perhaps more than ever before under the second Trump presidency. But the tectonic shift in the choice of common New Yorkers has disrupted this narrative. The 34-year-old Zohran Mamdani, the son of an immigrant family, a socialist democrat, has surmounted the unlikeliest of challenges to gain almost half the votes cast in the mayoral elections in New York.
In September 2024, in the wake of the federal government revealing corruption indictments against Mayor Eric Adams, he wrote an op-ed in Jacobin arguing that Adams should resign immediately. Anticipating core themes of his own mayoral campaign pitch, Zohran Mamdani wrote:
“New York’s working families are being bled dry by rent, energy bills, childcare costs, and groceries. They are the ones being pushed out of this city — and politicians backed by the price gougers will only make it worse. We need to build a political movement in this city that takes power back for the working class and delivers the kinds of transformative policies that can make life here not only liveable but good”.
Since then, it has been a steady rise galvanising the policy alternative for an affordable city and identity-driven persecution targeting Muslims and immigrants. He stood firmly against the horrific genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. The politics of his campaign underpinned the clarity demarcating Hinduism and Hindutwa and Jews and Zionism. In the process, he did not flinch from calling out Modi and Netanyahu. Therefore, Donald Trump felt compelled to unleash a crusade against Mamdani and his campaign platform, trying to unite the billionaires and the right wing, by recognising the shifting ground in this clash of visions.
It was not just the content of his campaign, but the form also underlined the nature of the clash. As opposed to the initial portrayal of Mamdani as a social media ‘wonderkid’, he campaigned relentlessly bringing together the grassroots for galvanising the economically vulnerable and marginalised ethnic identities. The end result is for all to see -- a tectonic shift with the signature tune of hope playing out powered by the youth.
