It Only Took 18 Hours And Perhaps As Many Drafts To Allow That “Some People Did Something”

Kathy Hochul and Letitia James didn’t take long to denounce protesters who chanted “Say it loud, say it clear, we support Hamas here” in front of a Queens synagogue. Even AOC wrote that “marching into a predominantly Jewish neighborhood and leading with a chant saying ‘we support Hamas’ is a disgusting and antisemitic thing to do. Pretty basic!”

And then there was the mayor:

Mayor Zohran Mamdani was facing an early test on a delicate matter. Protesters had gathered outside a synagogue in a heavily Jewish neighborhood of New York City and chanted in support of Hamas.

Video of the chants rocketed around social media, and by the time the protest ended at roughly 10 p.m., attention quickly turned to how he would respond. Yet for hours, Mr. Mamdani said nothing.

His first response came after an unrelated news conference shortly after noon the next day, when he was asked about the chants as he headed to his car. He briefly condemned the language; an official statement on the matter was distributed at 3:40 p.m. in response to The New York Times. At 6:23 p.m., he posted a more thorough statement on X.

The halting responses drew some criticism of Mr. Mamdani, whose political career has been driven in part by his passionate support of Palestine, for seeming reluctant to call out extremism and denounce Hamas.

But behind the scenes, a more revealing drama was unfolding. Mr. Mamdani’s team repeatedly debated the wording and fairness of the language, drafting and redrafting his response and sending it to leading Jewish figures for review.

[. . .]

It all began last Thursday on the evening of Jan. 8, when Mr. Mamdani’s liaison to Jewish New Yorkers, Josh Binderman, went to Queens to observe the protest, which had been organized to condemn an event by a real estate firm that promotes American investment in Israel and the occupied West Bank. Insults and slurs were hurled from protesters on each side.

Mr. Binderman quickly began crafting a statement on the mayor’s behalf. It was written and rewritten until he found language that he thought might pass muster with Jewish leaders and the mayor, according to detailed accounts from seven people involved in the matter.

He contacted at least one Jewish official the night of the protest and relayed the statement. The official expressed concern that it didn’t forcefully condemn Hamas. Mr. Binderman seemed to acquiesce, and that version of the statement was never released, according to one person familiar with the interaction.

Mr. Binderman wrote another statement that criticized the pro-Hamas chants, but also mentioned the Jewish Defense League, a Zionist group designated by the F.B.I. as a terrorist organization that is affiliated with the followers of Meir Kahane, a Brooklyn-born anti-Arab militant whose Kach party was outlawed in Israel for inciting racism. Online video of the protest showed some supporters carrying the group’s yellow flag.

Several Jewish leaders warned Mr. Binderman against drawing what they felt was an unfair equivalence, according to several people familiar with those exchanges. They believed the pro-Hamas chants were more widespread and pertinent than the presence of a Kahanist symbol.

A revised statement that forcefully condemned Hamas seemed to appease the Jewish leaders, several of the people said. But that version was also not released, and it was unclear why.

It was only after sundown on Friday, when observant Jews go offline for Shabbat, that Mr. Mamdani posted on social media a more direct public statement that referred to a terrorist organization, risking criticism from some far-left pro-Palestinian activists who valorize the group as legitimate armed resistance.

“As I said earlier today, chants in support of a terrorist organization have no place in our city,” Mr. Mamdani posted on X. “We will continue to ensure New Yorkers’ safety entering and exiting houses of worship as well as the constitutional right to protest.”

[. . .]

By the time Mr. Binderman negotiated the final draft of the statement and asked his Orthodox Jewish contacts to post it on social media, the sun had set on Friday evening.

The leaders Mr. Mamdani had sought to soothe had gone offline for Shabbat. They would be unreachable for a full day and would most likely not see the mayor’s statement until Saturday night.

That Kale Caesar From Sweetgreen? That Cheap Chinese Takeout? You Didn’t Build That!

Not merely content to bury the banal bourgeois fantasy of homeownership, the administration moves on to the algorithmic marauders that squeeze profits from the dimly lit recesses of the modern service economy:

The Big Apple sued the food-delivery company Motoclick on Thursday in an escalation of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s crackdown on apps.

Motoclick stole directly from its own workers by charging them $10 fees for canceled orders and deducting refunded orders from their pay, the lawsuit filed by the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection alleged.

The app owes workers millions of dollars in stolen pay and damages, according to the city — which is looking to sue Motoclick out of existence.

[. . .]

The filing comes just days after Mamdani’s administration accused DoorDash and Uber Eats of preventing delivery workers from earning more than $550 million in tips.

The one-two punch against the delivery apps is part of Mamdani’s promised crackdown on “predatory” apps that he contends are stealing money from hard-working delivery workers.

[. . .]

Sam Levine, the department’s new commissioner, said “billion-dollar corporations” should be on notice.

“Uber and Doordash do not make their food, they don’t serve the food, they don’t ride the bikes, they don’t repair the bikes, they don’t deliver the food,” he said. “It’s time that we stand up for the people who actually make deliveries a core part of the city — that actually make our economy work, and that’s the working people of New York.”

And another day, another rhetorical tic for the mayor — this time Mamdani seems to be channeling Lin-Manuel Miranda with “telling stories of the city” and whatnot:

The new Hizzoner has pledged his Department of Consumer and Worker Protection will be more aggressive on behalf of New Yorkers, whether workers or customers.

“I want to be very clear: City Hall does not desire to have an adversarial relationship with any business operating in our city,” Mamdani said. “We cannot tell the story of the city without also telling the story of business.

“To those, however, who think they can make a profit while stealing from their workers, while breaking the law, make no mistake. We will have those workers’ backs each and every time.”

Each and every time!

But the best thing about foregrounding the working class struggle in the vanguard of the revolution is that race magically disappears — although The Times might call you out on that one — “None of Mamdani’s Deputy Mayors Are Black. It Has Become a Problem.”:

[A black female political consultant] wrote on Facebook that in this “new era” of city politics, a term Mr. Mamdani uses to describe his administration, Black women “no longer have a seat at the big table” where decisions are made.

“It is acting out what Black people don’t like about the D.S.A.,” [she] said of the Democratic Socialists of America, of which Mr. Mamdani is a member. “And that’s acting as if race doesn’t matter.”

[A] former head of the powerful union Local 32BJ, wrote on Facebook that the Mamdani administration was the first in decades to not appoint a Black deputy mayor. He also attributed the lack of diversity to the “D.S.A.-aligned politics” of the left, where issues of class are given more weight than race.

Marc H. Morial, the president of the National Urban League who became mayor of New Orleans when he was just two years older than Mr. Mamdani, who is 34, said in an interview that choosing a diverse administration was considered a “basic rule of being a mayor.”

“I don’t care whether the mayor’s Black, white, Asian or Latino,” he said, “you need a leadership team that mirrors the city.”

Backpacking All The Way To The Upper East Side

. . . but someone should tell them that there are easier ways to wash a pair of socks. I can’t imagine the response to hearing about Bloomberg or de Blasio saying this, but if you squint maybe you’ll see a couple of child-free manic pixie progressive dream sprites doomscrolling the Neorest IG feed and it becomes a little less weird to visualize:

The socialist mayor is planning for another type of movement.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the city’s first lady Rama Duwaji officially moved into Gracie Mansion on Monday — and were flush with ideas about the 227-year-old mayoral residence’s bathrooms.

“One thing that we will change is we will be installing a few bidets into Gracie Mansion,” Mamdani said outside the Upper East Side landmark.

“That’s an aspirational hope. We’ll see if we can actually get it done.”

But besides acquiring fancy new piece of plumbing with which to wash his privates, “the unapologetic progressive Mamdani promised not to let the stately surroundings change him” — which means he’ll continue to make it as difficult as possible for his security detail as he chooses the most logistically challenging ways to get to City Hall and communicate in that stilted adverb- and adjective-laden Class President style of speaking that’s impossible not to notice:

Hizzoner said he’ll continue to take the subway, ride the bus and get on city bikes to commute from his new digs in Carl Schurz Park, at East End Avenue and 88th Street in Yorkville.

“While there is no security deposit being put down today, Rama and I intend to strive each day to be the best possible custodians of this beautiful home, because we know that we are only its temporary occupants,” he said.

“That doesn’t just mean a new coat of paint. It also means being intentional about how this historic property represents the civic fabric of the city, being thoughtful about how we steward the space and opening it up to New Yorkers who are not often the ones who get to visit such a place as this.”

It’s Going To Be Four Long Years Of Endless, Spirited Adjectives . . .

These quotes are making him sound like a walking Fodor’s Guide. Plus, just the thought of “endless chai” makes me feel like I have to pee:

Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his wife, Rama Duwaji, have begun their move from their one-bedroom Queens apartment to Gracie Mansion, the 11,000-square-foot historic home on the Upper East Side of Manhattan that has housed most of New York City’s mayors for decades, according to three people with knowledge of the move.

Mr. Mamdani is scheduled to hold a news conference at Gracie Mansion on Monday afternoon.

[. . .]

Though Astoria, the couple’s former home base, is separated from Gracie only by a bend of the East River, the move represents a psychic schlep between two politically and culturally divergent neighborhoods.

Astoria is a diverse middle-class area — mainly white, Hispanic and Asian American — that has long been a center of immigrant life in New York City. It is in the so-called Commie Corridor, a stretch of Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods known for their leftist politics. Its many progressive voters put Mr. Mamdani, a democratic socialist, in the State Assembly and then helped catapult him to City Hall.

Mr. Mamdani has been living in his rent-stabilized apartment since 2019, most recently paying $2,300 a month, and Astoria has become a central part of his political brand. He delights in promoting some of his favorite Bangladeshi, Thai and Afghan restaurants in the neighborhood.

He said last month that he and Ms. Duwaji “will miss it all — the endless Adeni chai, the spirited conversations in Spanish, Arabic and every language in between, the aromas of seafood and shawarma drifting down the block.”

Also, lol:

But the mayor has insisted that he is not worried about how much his political identity lines up with his new home.

“I don’t think too much of brand, to be honest,” he said on “The New Yorker Radio Hour” in October when asked about his potential move.

Tik Tok On The Clock But The Party Don’t Stop

His first formal press conference last week was in fact restricted to only “content creators” and closed to mainstream journalists (“City Hall aides said the online reach of the 78 attendees totaled roughly 82 million people”) as his administration picks up where his campaign left off when it comes to social media:

There was Zohran Mamdani — same suit, same beard, same Instagram handle — once again peering into the camera to talk to his 11 million followers, as he had in countless campaign videos.

But now, Mr. Mamdani — Mayor Mamdani — was speaking from his new office at City Hall, sitting behind the freshly polished desk once used by Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, flanked by an American flag and striped drapes trimmed in gold tassels.

As Mr. Mamdani spoke about his plan to convene “rental rip-off” hearings to hold landlords to account, the pseudo-informercial’s treacly elevator music and fake television static blurring the screen kicked in.

Mr. Mamdani, in his first full week as mayor, seemed eager to bring the spark that had made his local campaign a global phenomenon into a considerably less freewheeling new gig.

[. . .]

Mr. Mamdani’s team seemed eager to hold onto the very-online-ness of his campaign.

The team documented every announcement, meme and meal on social media: the chicken and spiced potatoes he ate for dinner at a Bangladeshi restaurant in Astoria, Queens; his ride on the Q70 bus on the day transit fares increased to $3 a ride; his first night working late from his new office, illuminated by a semicircle of desk lamps.

[. . .]

Seven days into his term, he strode into the stately Blue Room at City Hall — a space typically reserved for the most formal announcements and events.

Mr. Mamdani took his place at a lectern emblazoned with the city’s official seal, under a portrait of Alexander Hamilton framed in filigreed gold. He looked up to find a sea of iPhone cameras staring back at him; the attendees were not mainstream media journalists but rather a group of content creators who had become a crucial part of Mr. Mamdani’s public relations strategy during his campaign.

“It is a privilege to be gathered here today in a building that belongs to the people of New York but has been too long withheld from the people of New York,” he said.

At the end of the news conference, Mr. Mamdani turned around, held his phone above the podium and smiled for a selfie with the group.