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New York’s Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani celebrated his victory with supporters at the Brooklyn Paramount Theatre, New York, on November 4, 2025. This is the full text of his speech.
By ZOHRAN MAMDANI
Thank you, my friends. The sun may have set over our city this evening, but as Eugene Debs once said, “I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity.”
For as long as we can remember, the working people of New York have been told by the wealthy and the well-connected that power does not belong in their hands. Fingers bruised from lifting boxes on the warehouse floor, palms calloused from delivery bike handlebars, knuckles scarred with kitchen burns — these are not hands that have been allowed to hold power.
And yet, over the last 12 months, you have dared to reach for something greater. Tonight, against all odds, we have grasped it. The future is in our hands.
My friends, we have toppled a political dynasty. I wish Andrew Cuomo only the best in private life but let tonight be the final time I utter his name as we turn the page on a politics that abandons the many and answers only to the few.
New York, tonight you have delivered a mandate for change — a mandate for a new kind of politics, a city we can afford, and a government that delivers exactly that.
On January 1, I will be sworn in as the mayor of New York City. And that is because of you.
Before I say anything else, I must say this: thank you.
Thank you to the next generation of New Yorkers who refuse to accept that the promise of a better future is a relic of the past. You have shown that when politics speaks to you without condescension, we can usher in a new era of leadership. We will fight for you because we are you.
Or as we say on Steinway, ana minkum wa alaikum.
Thank you to those so often forgotten by the politics of our city who made this movement their own — Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas, Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses, Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties.
To every New Yorker in Kensington, Midwood and Hunts Point, know this: this city is your city, and this democracy is yours too.
This campaign is about people like Wesley, an 1199 organiser I met outside Elmhurst Hospital on Thursday night. A New Yorker who lives elsewhere, commuting two hours each way from Pennsylvania because rent is too expensive in this city. It’s about the woman I met on the BX33 bus years ago who said, “I used to love New York, but now it’s just where I live.” And it’s about Richard, the taxi driver I went on a 15-day hunger strike with outside City Hall, who still drives seven days a week.
This victory is for all of them — and for you, the more than 100 000 volunteers who built this campaign into an unstoppable force.
Because of you, we will make this city one that working people can love and live in again. With every door knocked, every petition signed, and every hard-earned conversation, you have eroded the cynicism that has come to define our politics.
Now, I know I have asked much of you over the last year. Time and again, you have answered my calls — but I have one final request.
New York City, breathe this moment in. We have held our breath for longer than we know — in anticipation of defeat, because the air has been knocked out of our lungs too many times to count, because we could not afford to exhale.
Thanks to all who sacrificed so much, we are breathing in the air of a city reborn.
To my campaign team, who believed when no one else did — who took an electoral project and turned it into so much more — I will never be able to express the depth of my gratitude. You can sleep now.
To my parents, Mama and Baba, you have made me into the man I am today. I am so proud to be your son.
And to my incredible wife, Rama — hayati — there is no one I would rather have by my side in this and every moment.
To every New Yorker — whether you voted for me, for one of my opponents, or felt too disappointed by politics to vote at all — thank you for the opportunity to prove myself worthy of your trust. I will wake each morning with a single purpose: to make this city better for you than it was the day before.
There are many who thought this day would never come — who feared we would be condemned only to a future of less, with every election consigning us simply to more of the same. And there are others who see politics today as too cruel for the flame of hope to still burn.
New York, we have answered those fears. Tonight, we have spoken in a clear voice.
Hope is alive
Hope is a decision that tens of thousands of New Yorkers made day after day, volunteer shift after volunteer shift, despite attack ad after attack ad.
More than a million of us stood in our churches, gymnasiums and community centres, filling in the ledger of democracy. And while we cast our ballots alone, we chose hope together — hope over tyranny, hope over big money and small ideas, hope over despair.
We won because New Yorkers allowed themselves to hope that the impossible could be made possible. We won because we insisted that politics will no longer be something done to us — it will be something we do.
Standing before you, I think of the words of Jawaharlal Nehru: “A moment comes but rarely in history when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends and when the soul of a nation long suppressed finds utterance.”
Tonight, we have stepped out from the old into the new. Let us speak now with clarity and conviction about what this new age will deliver, and for whom.
This will be an age where New Yorkers expect from their leaders a bold vision of what we will achieve, rather than excuses for what we are too timid to attempt. Central to that vision will be the most ambitious agenda to tackle the cost-of-living crisis this city has seen since Fiorello LaGuardia’s time — an agenda that will freeze rents for more than two million tenants, make buses fast and free, and deliver universal childcare.
Years from now, may our only regret be that this day took so long to come.
This new age will be one of relentless improvement. We will hire thousands more teachers, cut waste from a bloated bureaucracy, and make lights shine again in NYCHA developments where they have long flickered. Safety and justice will go hand in hand as we work with police officers to reduce crime and create a Department of Community Safety to tackle mental health and homelessness crises head-on. Excellence will become the expectation across government, not the exception.
In this new age we make for ourselves, we will refuse to allow those who traffic in division and hate to pit us against one another.
In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light.
Here, we believe in standing up for those we love — whether you are an immigrant, a member of the trans community, one of the many Black women fired by Donald Trump, a single mother still waiting for grocery prices to fall, or anyone else with their back against the wall — your struggle is ours too.
We will build a City Hall that stands steadfast alongside Jewish New Yorkers in the fight against antisemitism, and where more than a million Muslims know that they belong — not just in the five boroughs, but in the halls of power.
No longer will New York be a city where you can traffic in Islamophobia and win an election.
This new age will be defined by competence and compassion — virtues too long placed at odds with each other. We will prove that no problem is too large for government to solve and no concern too small for it to care about. For years, those in City Hall have helped only those who could help them. On January 1, we will usher in a government that helps everyone.
Many have heard our message only through the prism of misinformation. Tens of millions of dollars have been spent to convince our neighbours that this new age should frighten them. As has so often occurred, the billionaire class has tried to turn those earning $30 an hour against those earning $20 an hour, keeping us divided and distracted.
We refuse to let them dictate the rules any longer. They can play by the same rules as the rest of us.
Together, we will usher in a generation of change. If we embrace this brave new course rather than flee from it, we can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength they fear — not the appeasement they crave.
After all, if anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him. And if there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to gain power.
This is not only how we stop Trump — it’s how we stop the next one. So, Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: turn the volume up.
We will hold bad landlords to account because the Donald Trumps of our city have grown too comfortable exploiting tenants. We will end the culture of corruption that allows billionaires to evade taxation and abuse loopholes. We will stand with unions and expand labour protections, because when working people have ironclad rights, exploitative bosses grow small indeed.
New York will remain a city of immigrants — built by immigrants, powered by immigrants, and, as of tonight, led by an immigrant.
So hear me, President Trump: to get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us.
When we enter City Hall in 58 days, expectations will be high — and we will meet them.
A great New Yorker once said that while you campaign in poetry, you govern in prose. If that must be true, let the prose we write still rhyme — and let us build a shining city for all.
After all, the conventional wisdom says I am far from the perfect candidate. I am young, despite my best efforts to grow older. I am Muslim. I am a democratic socialist. And, most damning of all, I refuse to apologise for any of this.
Yet if tonight teaches us anything, it is that convention has held us back. We have bowed at the altar of caution and paid a mighty price. Too many working people cannot recognise themselves in our party. Too many have turned rightward for answers to why they’ve been left behind.
We will leave mediocrity behind. No longer will we need history books to prove that Democrats can dare to be great. Our greatness will be tangible — felt by every rent-stabilised tenant who knows their rent won’t soar next month; by grandparents who can stay in their homes and whose grandchildren live nearby because childcare is affordable; by single mothers who can commute safely and arrive on time; and by every New Yorker who opens a newspaper to read headlines of success, not scandal.
Most of all, it will be felt when the city they love finally loves them back.
Together, New York — we’re going to freeze the rent.
Together, New York — we’re going to make buses fast and free.
Together, New York — we’re going to deliver universal childcare.
Let the words we have spoken, the dreams we have dreamt, become the agenda we deliver — together.
New York, this power is yours. This city belongs to you.
