"Two Sundays ago, as snow softly fell, I spent 12 hours at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, listening to New Yorkers from every borough as they told me about the city that is theirs. We discussed construction hours on the Van Wyck Expressway and E.B.T. eligibility, affordable housing for artists and ICE raids. I spoke to a man named TJ who said that one day a few years ago, his heart broke as he realized he would never get ahead here, no matter how hard he worked. I spoke to a Pakistani Auntie named Samina, who told me that this movement had fostered something too rare: softness in people's hearts. As she said in Urdu: logon ke dil badalgyehe. [people's hearts have changed] 142 New Yorkers out of eight and a half million. And yet, if anything united each person sitting across from me, it was the shared recognition that this moment demands a new politics, and a new approach to power. We will deliver nothing less as we work each day to make this city belong to more of its people than it did the day before."
Zohran Mamdani

January 1, 1970

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Added on April 10, 2026
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Original Language: English

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