Watch Zohran Mamdani’s ELECTRIFYING full speech from his final NYC Mayoral Election rally, where the Democratic Socialist candidate takes a direct swipe at President Donald Trump, leaving the crowd roaring and the political world buzzing.
#ZohranMamdani #MamdaniRally #MamdaniLive #MamdaniNYC #ZohranMamdaniRally #MamdaniSpeech #MamdaniForMayor #NYCElection2025 #MamdaniCampaign #DemocraticSocialist #AOCRally #MamdaniDebate #UAWMamdani #ZohranMamdaniLive #MamdaniNews #NYCPolitics #MamdaniMovement #ProgressiveNYC #MamdaniForChange #NYCMayoralRace
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#ZohranMamdani #MamdaniRally #MamdaniLive #MamdaniNYC #ZohranMamdaniRally #MamdaniSpeech #MamdaniForMayor #NYCElection2025 #MamdaniCampaign #DemocraticSocialist #AOCRally #MamdaniDebate #UAWMamdani #ZohranMamdaniLive #MamdaniNews #NYCPolitics #MamdaniMovement #ProgressiveNYC #MamdaniForChange #NYCMayoralRace
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NewsTranscript
00:00As we stand on the precipice of taking this city back from corrupt politicians and the
00:06billionaires that fund them, let our words ring out so loud tonight that Andrew Cuomo
00:12can hear them in his $8,000 a month apartment.
00:16When we went on a 15-day hunger strike and won $450 million in debt relief for working
00:24class taxi drivers, and when we strode into Times Square under a billboard with betting
00:30odds that showed Cuomo's chances of winning at nearly 80%, we knew that the so-called
00:36experts were set to get it wrong yet again.
00:39Andrew Cuomo was supposed to be inevitable.
00:44And then on June 24th, we shattered that inevitability.
00:49Good evening, New York City!
01:01How are we all doing?
01:05Habibi, how are you?
01:12It is so good to see you all here tonight.
01:23Now as you know, a politician is only as good as the team around them.
01:30So I have to ask that team to start up this teleprompter.
01:34Because right now, it's off the top of the dome.
01:47And while we wait, why don't we actually begin?
01:51Can we first hear a round of applause for our incredible emcee, Sarah Sherman?
01:58Can we hear it for the elected officials, the labor leaders, and the New Yorkers who have
02:09joined us this evening?
02:18And can we hear it for Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?
02:33You know, there are many things one can say about our Congresswoman, but I want to tell
02:47you a story about 2021.
02:51When we went on a 15-day hunger strike and won $450 million in debt relief for working-class
03:00taxi drivers, the Congresswoman was there with us on that picket line.
03:10She was there with us on the phone after everyone else had gone home.
03:16And she was there with us again in the primary of this election.
03:22And that's because she's there for working people.
03:27And now we are just getting started.
03:32And let's please make some noise for Senator Bernie Sanders.
03:45I stand before you tonight only because the senator dared to stand alone for so long.
03:57I speak the language of democratic socialism only because he spoke it first.
04:08And when I ran for state assembly almost six years ago to the day, it was at Bernie's rally
04:15in Queensbridge Park where I led our first canvas.
04:22Signing people up for our email list, asking them for $5 or $10, and encouraging them to
04:28believe that the politics of not me, us applied to our state government just as much as our
04:34national one.
04:40When we win on November 4th, and then govern from City Hall with dignity as the foundation
04:52of our politics, it will be because of the movement that Bernie built.
05:03I stand before you tonight as the nominee of a democratic party reinvigorated in its pursuit
05:10of making government work for everyone, not just the wealthy and the well-connected.
05:24Looking out at more than 13,000 of you here in Forest Hills Stadium, it is tempting to believe
05:33that this moment was always destined.
05:37Yet when we launched this campaign on October 23rd, one year and three days ago, there was
05:44not a single television camera there to cover it.
05:50When we launched this campaign one year and three days ago, my name was a statistical anomaly
05:57in every poll.
05:59Four months later, as recently as this February, our support had reached the eye-watering heights
06:06of 1%.
06:10We were tied with noted candidate, someone else.
06:18I always knew we could beat him.
06:21When we launched this campaign one year and three days ago, the political world did not
06:26pay it much attention.
06:29Because we were looking to build a movement that reflected the city as it actually is, not
06:34just the one that political consultants think exists on a spreadsheet.
06:43And when we launched this campaign one year and three days ago, we were dismissed as a punchline
06:48in the halls of power.
06:50The idea of fundamentally changing who government serves in this city was unimaginable.
06:57Even if we gained momentum, they asked, how would we ever overcome the tens of millions
07:02of dollars in a tax that would follow?
07:05Yet we knew then, what we know now, New York is not for sale.
07:19As young people showed up in record numbers, as immigrants saw themselves in the politics
07:26of their city, as seniors, once skeptical, dared to dream again.
07:33We spoke with one voice, New York is not for sale.
07:40And now, as we stand on the precipice of taking this city back from corrupt politicians and
07:47the billionaires that fund them, let our words ring out so loud tonight that Andrew Cuomo can
07:54hear them in his $8,000 a month apartment.
08:04Let them ring so loud so that he can hear us even if he's in Westchester this evening.
08:15Let them ring so loud that his puppet master in the White House hears us.
08:25New York is not for sale.
08:36Thirteen days after we announced our candidacy, Donald Trump won the presidency once again.
08:46The Bronx and Queens saw some of the largest shifts to the right of any counties in our country.
08:55No matter what article you read or channeled you turned to, the story seemed to be the same.
09:02Our city was headed to the right.
09:09Obituaries were written about Democrats' abilities to reach Asian voters, young voters, male voters.
09:16Again and again we were told that if we had any hope of beating the Republican Party, it would
09:23only be by becoming the Republican Party.
09:30Andrew Cuomo himself said that we had lost not because we had failed to speak to the needs
09:36of working class Americans, but because we had spent too much time talking about bathrooms
09:40and sports teams.
09:46This was a moment where it seemed our political horizon was narrowing.
09:52And in this moment, New York, you had a choice, a choice to retreat or to fight.
10:04And the choice that we made was to stop listening to those experts and to start listening to you.
10:13We went to two of the places that saw the biggest swings to the right, Fordham Road and Hillside
10:22Avenue.
10:25These New Yorkers were far from the caricature of Trump voters.
10:30They told us they supported Donald Trump because they felt disconnected from a Democratic Party
10:36that had grown comfortable with mediocrity and gave its time only to those who gave millions.
10:41They told us that they felt abandoned by a party beholden to corporations, which asked
10:48them for their votes after telling them only what it was against rather than presenting a
10:53vision of what it was for.
10:59They told us they didn't believe in a system anymore that did not even pretend to offer solutions
11:05to the defining challenge of their lives, the cost of living crisis.
11:10Rent was too expensive.
11:12So were groceries.
11:13So was childcare.
11:14So was taking the bus and working two or three jobs still wasn't enough.
11:19Trump, for all his many flaws, had promised them an agenda that would put more money in
11:25their pockets and lower the cost of living.
11:31Donald Trump lied.
11:35It was up to us to deliver for the working people he left behind.
11:43Over the eight months of the primary, we told New Yorkers how we intended to address that
11:48very same affordability crisis.
11:52We did not do it alone.
11:54This was a movement powered by tens of thousands of everyday New Yorkers who knocked doors between
12:0412-hour shifts at work and phone banked until their fingers were numb.
12:10People who had never voted before became diehard canvassers.
12:17Community formed.
12:19Our city got to know each other and itself.
12:23This my friends was your movement.
12:29And it always will be.
12:36As the snow melted and the frost thawed, this campaign began to grow faster than anyone
12:43ever imagined possible.
12:46So many small donors chipped in that we had to ask you to stop donating.
12:54Please stop.
12:57We climbed the polls faster than Andrew Cuomo could dial Donald Trump's number.
13:06People started to learn how to pronounce my name.
13:13And the billionaires got scared.
13:33Or as the New York Times would describe it, the Hamptons was basically in group therapy
13:41about the mayoral race.
13:46Andrew Cuomo and his corporate cronies did everything they could to make this campaign
13:52one of fear and one of smallness.
13:59Hell yeah.
14:01Obviously.
14:03They pumped millions into this race.
14:11Artificially lengthened my beard to make me seem menacing.
14:19Painted our city as a dystopian hellhole.
14:23And worked night and day to divide the people of New York.
14:30They failed.
14:35When I walked the length of Manhattan just a few days before the election, hundreds of New
14:41Yorkers marched alongside me.
14:46And when we strode into Times Square under a billboard with betting odds that showed Cuomo's
14:51chances of winning at nearly 80 percent, we knew that the so-called experts were set to
14:57get it wrong yet again.
15:02Andrew Cuomo was supposed to be inevitable.
15:07And then on June 24th, we shattered that inevitability.
15:17We won by 13 percent with the most votes in any citywide primary in New York City history.
15:35Some of those New Yorkers had voted for Trump.
15:38Many others had never voted before.
15:41And when Andrew Cuomo called me to concede at 10.15 that night, he said over the phone
15:50that we had created a tremendous force.
15:58When you insist on building a coalition with room for every New Yorker, that is exactly what
16:03you create a tremendous force.
16:11That force has only grown over these past four months.
16:15We now have more than 90,000 volunteers.
16:22And we have spoken to millions more New Yorkers.
16:26We have put forth new plans in these last few months for how we will govern, hiring thousands
16:33more teachers for our schools, taking on the consultants and the contracts in city government,
16:45and tackling the final boss of New York City infrastructure, scaffolding.
16:55But over the past few weeks, as this race has entered its final days, we have witnessed displays
17:01of Islamophobia that shocked the conscience.
17:08Andrew Cuomo, Eric Adams, and Curtis Sliwa do not have an agenda for the future.
17:18All they possess is the playbook of the past.
17:22They have sought to make this election a referendum not on the affordability crisis that consumes
17:28New Yorkers' lives, but on the faith I belong to and the hatred they seek to normalize.
17:37We spent months working to convince the world that New Yorkers have a right to afford this
17:43city that we all love.
17:45Now we are being forced to defend the idea that a Muslim is even allowed to lead it.
17:54These same big-money donors and disgraced politicians have sought to rob us of our ambition because
18:01they do not think that you deserve the beauty of a dignified life.
18:06And time and again they have encouraged you to imagine less because they know that a reimagined
18:13New York hurts their bottom line.
18:19I believe that this city is like the universe, constantly expanding.
18:28We deserve a city government as ambitious as the working New Yorkers who make it the greatest
18:33city in the world.
18:38We cannot wait for someone else to deliver it.
18:42We are not afforded the luxury of waiting.
18:45Because too often to wait is to trust those who delivered us to this point.
18:52On November 4th we will set the course of our city back in the direction it belongs.
19:02And in doing so we will answer a question that our nation has wrestled with from the dawn
19:09of our founding.
19:11Who is allowed to be free?
19:16There are some who hear that question and they know the answer without hesitation.
19:21They are the oligarchs who have accumulated vast wealth off those who labor from before the
19:27light breaks the horizon until long after color has drained from the sky.
19:34These are the robber barons of America and they believe their money affords them a larger
19:40say than the rest of us.
19:46I am not just talking about the Bill Ackmans and Ken Langones of the world.
19:53I speak of people whose names you are not familiar with who have no qualms about contributing
19:59more to super PACs than we would ever tax them and who celebrate when those PACs flood our airwaves
20:06with commercials that plaster the words global jihad over my face.
20:16Their freedom doesn't just come at the expense of dignity and truth.
20:21It comes at the expense of the freedoms of others too.
20:26They are the authoritarians who seek to keep us pressed beneath their thumbs because they
20:31know that once we shake ourselves loose we will never be held down again.
20:40Each and every one of these people think New York is for sale.
21:01For too long, my friends, freedom has belonged only to those who can afford to buy it.
21:08The oligarchs of New York are the wealthiest people in the wealthiest city, in the wealthiest
21:13nation in the history of the world.
21:16They do not want the equation to change.
21:20They will do everything they can to prevent their grip from weakening.
21:25The truth is as simple as it is non-negotiable.
21:30We are all allowed freedom.
21:38Each one of us, the working people of this city, the taxi drivers, the line cooks, the nurses,
21:52all those seeking lives of grace, not greed, we all get to be free.
21:58And on November 4th, thanks to the hard work of more than 90,000 volunteers across every
22:05corner of this city, that is exactly what we will tell the world.
22:14Because while Donald Trump's billionaire donors think that they have the money to buy this election,
22:20we have a movement of the masses.
22:27And we are a movement that is not afraid of what we believe.
22:33And we've believed it for quite some time.
22:38Those who worry about what this movement may look like on January 1st are the ones who worried
22:45on October 23rd what it may look like tonight.
22:50But our purpose has not changed and neither have our promises.
22:55As I said on the evening, I announced the job of government is to actually make our lives
23:01better.
23:05And in the exact words I said on October 23rd, here is what we stand for, my friends.
23:14We are going to freeze the rent for more than 2 million rent-stabilized tenants.
23:22And use every resource at our disposal to build housing for everyone who needs it.
23:31We are going to eliminate the fare on every single bus line.
23:39And make what are currently the slowest buses in the nation move around this city with ease.
23:47And we are going to create universal childcare at no cost to parents.
23:56So New Yorkers can raise their family in the city they love.
24:04Together New York, we are going to freeze the rent.
24:09Together New York, we are going to make buses fast and freeze.
24:13Together New York, we are going to deliver universal childcare.
24:17We will make our city one where every person who calls it home can live a dignified life.
24:29No New Yorker should ever be priced out of anything they need to survive.
24:39And we believe then, we believe today, we will believe tomorrow that it is government's job
24:45to deliver that dignity.
24:49Dignity, my friends, is another way of saying freedom.
24:58Standing before you this evening, I take great strength from those who have labored mightily
25:04for the cause of freedom in America, who refuse to accept that government could not meet what
25:10moments of crisis demanded from them.
25:14When the power of the people overwhelms the influence of the powerful, there is no crisis
25:19that government cannot meet.
25:24It was government that enacted a new deal to lift a generation out of poverty.
25:31To create beautiful public goods.
25:36And establish the right to unionize and collectively bargain.
25:44My friends, the era of government that deems an issue too small or a crisis too big must
25:51come to an end.
25:54Because we need a government that is every bit as ambitious as our adversaries.
26:02A government strong enough to refuse the realities we will not accept and forge the future we
26:08know we deserve.
26:13A government that refuses to accept one in four New Yorkers living in poverty.
26:20That refuses to accept more than 150,000 public school students being homeless.
26:28That refuses to accept that two union salaries are not enough to put down a mortgage in this
26:34city.
26:38And a government that refuses to accept you being priced out of the very city you helped
26:43to build every single day.
26:50Time and again, our nation has teetered on the precipice of hopelessness.
26:56Now is one of those times.
27:00But in each of these moments, working people have reached into the darkness and reshaped our
27:06democracy.
27:09No longer will we allow the Republican Party to be the one of ambition.
27:18No longer will we have to open a history book to read about Democrats leading with big ideas.
27:29My friends, the world is changing.
27:32It's not a question of whether that change will come.
27:36It's a question of who will change it.
27:42We have an opportunity before us that few have ever received and even fewer have seized.
27:49It's the opportunity to show the world what it means to win freedom.
27:54It is the opportunity to live up to the legacy left by those who came before.
28:03We do not get to determine the scale of a crisis.
28:09Our choice is how we respond.
28:13Let us win a city hall that works for those straining to buy groceries, not those straining to buy
28:20our democracy.
28:28And let us look forward to January 1st, when the hard work of governing will begin.
28:38Those in power would like to describe our policy commitments as if they are illusions that will
28:45evaporate as soon as we approach city hall.
28:49Let us show them instead that they are invocations of the future that we will win.
28:59And let us prove to each and every New Yorker that a politics of expansion does not just
29:05mean imagination, it insists upon fulfillment.
29:14We can make city hall a place where New Yorkers come to expect the future, not just failure.
29:25But we are not there yet.
29:28Just as Andrew Cuomo's victory in the primary was thought to be inevitable, the same narrative
29:33has started to form around us today.
29:38When you read the articles that tell a post-election story of triumph while we are amidst early voting,
29:45when you see the Calci odds that have our chances of victory in the 90s, know this.
29:53You are reading the same things that Andrew Cuomo read when he went to sleep each night in June,
30:00believing that his victory was promised.
30:03We cannot allow complacency to infiltrate this movement.
30:13So over these nine final days, I ask for only one thing from each of you, more.
30:31I know you are tired.
30:36And for that, I recommend some Adni chai.
30:41And still, I ask for more.
30:46I know the attacks have intensified that a warm bed is more inviting than a six-floor walk-up,
30:52that another evening spent knocking doors after a long workday feels daunting.
30:57And still, I ask for more.
31:03I ask for more because that is the only way that we win a future of more.
31:10So if you are able, I urge you, my friends, stand up.
31:20If you have knocked a door, turn your flashlight on.
31:29If you have more to give, turn your flashlight on.
31:48Together, let us make a light bright enough to banish any darkness.
32:01Over these final nine days and the months and years that follow, the powers that be will
32:08throw everything in their arsenal against us.
32:12They will spend millions more dollars.
32:15They will attack us from every conceivable angle.
32:20But we will not bend.
32:24We will not flinch.
32:29We will triumph over the oligarchs and we will return dignity to our lives.
32:39Nearly 89 years ago to the day, FDR spoke before a crowd of thousands at Madison Square Garden.
32:49He said, I should like to have it said of my first administration that in it, the forces
32:56of selfishness and of lust for power met their match.
33:04My friends, I should like to have it said of our campaign that in it, the forces of selfishness
33:20and lust for power met their match.
33:23And I should like to have it said of our city hall that in it, these forces met their master.
33:42New York, our work has only just begun.
33:49On November 4th, we set ourselves free.
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