New York, United States – Sprawling crowds, a seven-block-long occasion and chants to “tax the wealthy” on this planet’s wealthiest metropolis marked Zohran Mamdani’s public inauguration as New York Metropolis mayor on Thursday, because the metropolis welcomed a brand new yr with a brand new management.
Political inaugurations are often extra stolid affairs. However, as he had in his marketing campaign for the mayoralty, Mamdani flipped the script together with his swearing-in occasions.
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In act one, simply after midnight, because the ball dropped in Occasions Sq. to ring in 2026, Mamdani took the oath of workplace in a small ceremony on the steps of the landmark New York Metropolis Corridor subway station.
New York State Lawyer Basic Letitia James administered the oath as Mamdani stood beside his spouse, Rama Duwaji, on a staircase contained in the transit hub, which has not been used for passenger service since 1945. He used a historic Quran borrowed from the New York Public Library for his swearing in, and a second one which belonged to his grandfather.
The general public celebration arrived later, on New 12 months’s Day, when Mamdani repeated the oath on the steps of Metropolis Corridor earlier than a crowd that spilled throughout the encircling plaza and into the streets. Regardless of the blistering chilly, tens of 1000’s of supporters streamed into Decrease Manhattan to look at the brand new mayor – together with the town’s comptroller, Mark Levine, and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams – formally assume workplace.
Nationwide political heavyweights, together with Consultant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, flanked the town’s new management and delivered speeches outlining the progressive motion’s governing ambitions in New York and the nationwide reverberations the race has already despatched to lawmakers throughout the nation.
“Crucial lesson that may be discovered immediately is that when working individuals stand, once they don’t allow them to [the ultra-wealthy] divide us up, there’s nothing that we can’t accomplish,” Sanders stated earlier than swearing in Mamdani.
Whereas friends and the press gathered contained in the Metropolis Corridor grounds, the town staged a seven-block-long public block occasion – a brand new twist on the historically ticketed inauguration format. Along with a closed occasion capped at a number of thousand attendees, anybody prepared to RSVP and endure the frigid air and blustering winds after an evening of snowfall might attempt their luck at getting in.
And plenty of did, bundled New Yorkers shuffled by way of safety checkpoints, hoping to glimpse the swearing-in of a 34-year-old democratic socialist now charged with running the largest city in the US, streaming on massive screens stationed all through the encircling space exterior Metropolis Corridor.
Some supporters informed Al Jazeera they waited in line for hours, and plenty of by no means made it by way of the checkpoints in time. Whereas crowds cheered and horns blasted in solidarity from a distance, a handful of protesters lingered behind police barricades.
The block occasion in and of itself was symbolic in its effort to achieve extra New Yorkers who’ve usually been omitted of the political course of, Democratic strategist Nomiki Konst informed Al Jazeera.
“It was a manner of opening up one thing that hasn’t been accessible for anyone, you understand, that wasn’t a part of the internal circle of New York politics and media,” Konst informed Al Jazeera.
“It was a possibility to offer again to the individuals who helped him get into workplace.”
A message of unity and affordability
Mamdani, Williams and Levine spoke about unity for all New Yorkers, delivering remarks in English, Spanish, Hebrew and Greek, and showing alongside religion leaders of several different faiths, together with Islam, Christianity and Judaism.
“We now have three swearings-in. One by a frontrunner utilizing a Quran, one by a frontrunner utilizing a Christian Bible, and one utilizing a Hebrew Bible. I’m proud to dwell in a metropolis the place that is doable,” Levine stated after taking the oath of workplace.
Mamdani echoed that sentiment.
“We’ll draw this metropolis nearer collectively. We’ll exchange the frigidity of rugged individualism with the heat of collectivism. If our marketing campaign demonstrated that the individuals of New York yearn for solidarity, then let this authorities foster it,” Mamdani stated in his deal with.
“We’ll ship nothing much less as we work every day to make this metropolis belong to extra of its individuals than it did the day earlier than.”
However the core message, voiced repeatedly by Mamdani, Levine, Williams, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, was the identical one which outlined the marketing campaign: that the extremely rich ought to pay larger taxes.
“Demanding that the rich and huge firms begin paying their justifiable share of taxes just isn’t radical. It’s precisely the suitable factor to do,” Sanders stated, as supporters chanted, “Tax the wealthy.”
Considered one of Mamdani’s core promises was to boost the company tax charge in New York Metropolis from 7.25 p.c to 11.5 p.c, equal to that of neighbouring New Jersey, in addition to a 2 p.c improve in taxes on those that make greater than $1m a yr. Any tax plan would want the approval of the governor to maneuver ahead.
“This motion got here out of eight-and-a-half million somewheres – taxi cab depots and Amazon warehouses, DSA [Democratic Socialists of America] conferences and curbside domino video games. The powers that be had appeared away from these locations for fairly a while – in the event that they’d recognized about them in any respect – so that they dismissed them as nowhere. However in our metropolis, the place each nook of those 5 boroughs holds energy, there isn’t a nowhere and there’s no nobody,” Mamdani stated.
Housing coverage has been central to that affordability message for Mamdani. Considered one of his signature marketing campaign guarantees was to freeze the lease on the town’s rental stabilised flats, which signify about half of the town’s rental housing inventory.
“These in rent-stabilised properties will now not dread the newest lease hike – as a result of we’ll freeze the lease,” Mamdani stated in his remarks.
Solely hours later, Mamdani launched a slate of govt orders all geared toward housing.
“On the primary day of this new administration, on the day when so many lease funds are due, we is not going to wait to ship motion,” Mamdani stated at a information convention.
He introduced three govt orders inside a rent-stabilised constructing in Brooklyn, together with the creation of two new metropolis activity forces on housing coverage: one to take stock of city-owned land that may very well be used for housing, and one other to establish methods to spur improvement.
“The housing disaster is on the centre of our affordability disaster. There are a variety of issues we’re going to be targeted on: defending tenants, going after unhealthy landlords, and constructing extra housing. An enormous a part of how we get out of our housing disaster is to construct extra inexpensive housing throughout the town,” Leila Bozorg, the Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning, informed Al Jazeera on the steps of Metropolis Corridor hours earlier than saying the brand new insurance policies.
“These are coverage selections we are able to deal with if we’ve got the political will and if we put the sources behind it. And that’s what he [Mamdani] is dedicated to doing.”
