New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani gave a speech on Friday to mark 250 years of the United States. He spoke from behind a desk once used by George Washington. Naturalised citizens stood around him as he spoke about the waves of immigrants who built the city over time.
Mamdani listed several groups, including Irish, Chinese, Jewish, Italian and Syrian immigrants, and said they helped shape New York despite facing government rules that tried to keep them out.
“Hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants arrived with stomachs aching from a famine manufactured by imperial cruelty,” Mamdani said. “Chinese sailors settled in what is today Chinatown. Millions more traveled under the Statue of Liberty and through Ellis Island. Jewish people escaping pogroms, Italians fleeing poverty. Syrians seeking economic opportunity.
Mamdani was born in Uganda and moved to New York at the age of seven. He became a US citizen in 2018. In his speech, he said “you each hold a special power the power to determine what America means.”
He also spoke about what he sees as two different ideas of America. One, he said, is open to everyone. The other, he argued, only welcomes people with a certain background or skin colour. He warned against using division as a political tool and called it an old and cheap trick.
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Contrast with Trump’s Mount Rushmore address
Mamdani’s speech came just before Donald Trump’s own address at Mount Rushmore later that day, which was expected to include fireworks, military bands and flights by aircraft.
The report also points out that Mamdani skipped any mention of Christopher Columbus, choosing instead to credit explorers Giovanni da Verrazzano and Henry Hudson.
He furthermore appealed to patriotism but a form of it very different from the one Trump is bound to offer later on Friday.
“Patriotism has never been about pretending our nation is without flaws,” the New York mayor said. “Patriotism is every act of righteous dissent. It is every march led under the heavy sun. It is every protest held a decade before its time. It is precisely because we love this nation that we will not leave it.”
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This came soon after several candidates backed by Mamdani won local elections, part of a wider trend of left-leaning wins in cities such as Philadelphia, Denver and Washington DC.
The celebration is expected to include fireworks, military bands, aviation flyovers and a salute to the six branches of the armed forces.
(With inputs from agencies)
