Zohran Mamdani Ushers in a Bold New Era for New York City
On January 1, 2026, Zohran Mamdani, New York City's first Muslim mayor, delivered a rousing inaugural address outside City Hall after being sworn in by Senator Bernie Sanders.
The speech, addressing a crowd amid a generational shift in leadership, emphasized unity, audacious governance, and a commitment to making the city accessible to all its residents.
Drawing on personal anecdotes, historical references, and policy pledges, Mamdani outlined a vision of inclusive progress, rejecting small ambitions in favor of transformative change.
Unity and Inclusivity Across Diverse Communities:
Mamdani stressed that he stands "alongside" all New Yorkers, from voters who supported him to those who did not, promising to serve everyone regardless of background. He envisioned New York as "eight and a half million cities" woven together, celebrating linguistic, religious, and cultural diversity—from Pashto speakers to those praying in mosques or not at all—while fostering solidarity over individualism.
Audacious Governance and Rejection of Low Expectations:
Rejecting advice to temper public hopes, Mamdani vowed to "govern expansively and audaciously," demanding excellence from government akin to the private sector. He declared the end of hesitation in using City Hall's power to improve lives, aiming to restore faith in democracy through resolve and results.
Historical Legacy and Ownership of the City:
Referencing past mayors like Bill de Blasio, David Dinkins, and Fiorello La Guardia, he committed to resurrecting a legacy where New York "belongs to all who live in it," inspired by the South African Freedom Charter. He criticized historical favoritism toward the wealthy, highlighting issues like crowded schools, broken infrastructure, and corporate exploitation.
Policy Agenda for Safety, Affordability, and Abundance:
Outlining specific reforms, Mamdani promised a new Department of Community Safety to address mental health and refocus police, property tax overhaul, action against bad landlords, and reduced bureaucracy for small businesses. Key pledges included universal child care funded by taxing the rich, rent freezes for stabilized housing, and free, faster buses to enhance freedom and connectivity.
Personal Reflections and Love for New York:
Interweaving his immigrant story—from childhood scooter rides and pizza slices to hunger strikes and citizenship oaths—Mamdani expressed deep affection for the city's unique vibrancy, positioning New Yorkers as stewards of an unparalleled global hub. He shared recent interactions with residents, like TJ and Samina, to underscore the movement's roots in everyday struggles and its power to soften hearts.
Gratitude and Acknowledgments:
Mamdani thanked family, political mentors like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, predecessors like Eric Adams, and the broader movement, framing the administration as a collective effort born from "eight and a half million somewheres" across the boroughs.
Full Transcript of the Inaugural Address by Mayor Zohran Mamdani:
My fellow New Yorkers: Today begins a new era.
I stand before you moved by the privilege of taking this sacred oath, humbled by the faith that you have placed in me, and honored to serve as either your 111th or 112th Mayor of New York City. But I do not stand alone.
I stand alongside you, the tens of thousands gathered here in Lower Manhattan, warmed against the January chill by the resurgent flame of hope.
I stand alongside countless more New Yorkers watching from cramped kitchens in Flushing and barbershops in East New York, from cellphones propped against the dashboards of parked taxi cabs at LaGuardia, from hospitals in Mott Haven and libraries in El Barrio that have too long known only neglect.
I stand alongside construction workers in steel-toed boots and halal cart vendors whose knees ache from working all day.
I stand alongside neighbors who carry a plate of food to the elderly couple down the hall, those in a rush who still lift strangers’ strollers up subway stairs, and every person who makes the choice day after day, even when it feels impossible, to call our city home.
I stand alongside over one million New Yorkers who voted for this day nearly two months ago — and I stand just as resolutely alongside those who did not. I know there are some who view this administration with distrust or disdain, or who see politics as permanently broken.
And while only action can change minds, I promise you this: If you are a New Yorker, I am your mayor. Regardless of whether we agree, I will protect you, celebrate with you, mourn alongside you, and never, not for a second, hide from you.
I thank the labor and movement leaders here today, the activists and elected officials who will return to fighting for New Yorkers the second this ceremony concludes, and the performers who have gifted us with their talent.
Thank you to Governor Hochul for joining us. And thank you to Mayor Adams— Dorothy’s son, a son of Brownsville who rose from washing dishes to the highest position in our city — for being here as well. He and I have had our share of disagreements, but I will always be touched that he chose me as the mayoral candidate that he would most want to be trapped with on an elevator.
Thank you to the two titans who, as an Assembly member, I’ve had the privilege of being represented by in Congress: Nydia Velázquez and our incredible opening speaker, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. You have paved the way for this moment.
Thank you to the man whose leadership I seek most to emulate, who I am so grateful to be sworn in by today, Senator Bernie Sanders.
Thank you to my teams: from the Assembly, to the campaign, to the transition and, now, the team I am so excited to lead from City Hall.
Thank you to my parents, Mama and Baba, for raising me, for teaching me how to be in this world, and for having brought me to this city.
Thank you to my family, from Kampala to Delhi.
And thank you to my wife, Rama, for being my best friend, and for always showing me the beauty in everyday things.
Most of all, thank you to the people of New York.
A moment like this comes rarely. Seldom do we hold such an opportunity to transform and reinvent. Rarer still is it the people themselves whose hands are the ones upon the levers of change.
And yet we know that too often in our past, moments of great possibility have been promptly surrendered to small imagination and smaller ambition. What was promised was never pursued, what could have changed remained the same. For the New Yorkers most eager to see our city remade, the weight has only grown heavier, the wait has only grown longer.
In writing this address, I have been told that this is the occasion to reset expectations, that I should use this opportunity to encourage the people of New York to ask for little and expect even less. I will do no such thing. The only expectation I seek to reset is that of small expectations.
Beginning today, we will govern expansively and audaciously. We may not always succeed. But never will we be accused of lacking the courage to try.
To those who insist that the era of big government is over, hear me when I say this: No longer will City Hall hesitate to use its power to improve New Yorkers’ lives.
For too long, we have turned to the private sector for greatness, while accepting mediocrity from those who serve the public. I cannot blame anyone who has come to question the role of government, whose faith in democracy has been eroded by decades of apathy. We will restore that trust by walking a different path: one where government is no longer solely the final recourse for those struggling, one where excellence is no longer the exception.
We expect greatness from the cooks wielding a thousand spices, from those who stride out onto Broadway stages, from our starting point guard at Madison Square Garden. Let us demand the same from those who work in government. In a city where the mere names of our streets are associated with the innovation of the industries that call them home, we will make the words “City Hall” synonymous with both resolve and results.
As we embark upon this work, let us advance a new answer to the question asked of every generation: Who does New York belong to?
For much of our history, the response from City Hall has been simple: It belongs only to the wealthy and well-connected, those who never strain to capture the attention of those in power.
Working people have reckoned with the consequences. Crowded classrooms and public housing developments where the elevators sit out of order. Roads littered with potholes and buses that arrive half an hour late, if at all. Wages that do not rise and corporations that rip off consumers and employees alike.
And still, there have been brief, fleeting moments where the equation changed.
Twelve years ago, Bill de Blasio stood where I stand now as he promised to “put an end to economic and social inequalities” that divided our city into two.
In 1990, David Dinkins swore the same oath I swore today, vowing to celebrate the “gorgeous mosaic” that is New York, where every one of us is deserving of a decent life.
And nearly six decades before him, Fiorello La Guardia took office with the goal of building a city that was “far greater and more beautiful” for the hungry and the poor.
Some of these Mayors achieved more success than others. But they were unified by a shared belief that New York could belong to more than just a privileged few. It could belong to those who operate our subways and rake our parks, those who feed us biryani and beef patties, picanha and pastrami on rye. And they knew that this belief could be made true if only government dared to work hardest for those who work hardest.
Over the years to come, my administration will resurrect that legacy. City Hall will deliver an agenda of safety, affordability, and abundance, where government looks and lives like the people it represents, never flinches in the fight against corporate greed, and refuses to cower before challenges that others have deemed too complicated.
In so doing, we will provide our own answer to that age-old question — who does New York belong to? Well, my friends, we can look to Madiba and the South African Freedom Charter: New York “belongs to all who live in it.”
Together, we will tell a new story of our city.
This will not be a tale of one city, governed only by the one percent. Nor will it be a tale of two cities, the rich versus the poor.
It will be a tale of eight and a half million cities, each of them a New Yorker with hopes and fears, each a universe, each of them woven together.
The authors of this story will speak Pashto and Mandarin, Yiddish and Creole. They will pray in mosques, at shul, at church, at Gurdwaras and Mandirs and temples. And many will not pray at all.
They will be Russian Jewish immigrants in Brighton Beach, Italians in Rossville, and Irish families in Woodhaven — many of whom came here with nothing but a dream of a better life, a dream which has withered away. They will be young people in cramped Marble Hill apartments where the walls shake when the subway passes. They will be Black homeowners in St. Albans whose homes represent a physical testament to triumph over decades of lesser-paid labor and redlining. They will be Palestinian New Yorkers in Bay Ridge, who will no longer have to contend with a politics that speaks of universalism and then makes them the exception.
Few of these eight and a half million will fit into neat and easy boxes. Some will be voters from Hillside Avenue or Fordham Road who supported President Trump a year before they voted for me, tired of being failed by their party’s establishment. The majority will not use the language that we often expect from those who wield influence. I welcome the change. For too long, those fluent in the good grammar of civility have deployed decorum to mask agendas of cruelty.
Many of these people have been betrayed by the established order. But in our administration, their needs will be met. Their hopes and dreams and interests will be reflected transparently in government. They will shape our future.
And if for too long these communities have existed as distinct from one another, we will draw this city closer together. We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism. If our campaign demonstrated that the people of New York yearn for solidarity, then let this government foster it. Because no matter what you eat, what language you speak, how you pray, or where you come from, the words that most define us are the two we all share: New Yorkers.
And it will be New Yorkers who reform a long-broken property tax system. New Yorkers who will create a new Department of Community Safety that will tackle the mental health crisis and let the police focus on the job they signed up to do. New Yorkers who will take on the bad landlords who mistreat their tenants and free small business owners from the shackles of bloated bureaucracy. And I am proud to be one of those New Yorkers.
When we won the primary last June, there were many who said that these aspirations and those who held them had come out of nowhere. Yet one man’s nowhere is another man’s somewhere. This movement came out of eight and a half million somewheres — taxi cab depots and Amazon warehouses, D.S.A. meetings and curbside domino games. The powers that be had looked away from these places for quite some time — if they’d known about them at all — so they dismissed them as nowhere. But in our city, where every corner of these five boroughs holds power, there is no nowhere and there is no no one. There is only New York, and there are only New Yorkers.
Eight and a half million New Yorkers will speak this new era into existence. It will be loud. It will be different. It will feel like the New York we love.
No matter how long you have called this city home, that love has shaped your life. I know that it has shaped mine.
This is the city where I set land-speed records on my Razor scooter at the age of 12. Quickest four blocks of my life.
The city where I ate powdered doughnuts at halftime during A.Y.S.O. soccer games and realized I probably wouldn’t be going pro, devoured too-big slices at Koronet Pizza, played cricket with my friends at Ferry Point Park, and took the 1 train to the BX10 only to still show up late to Bronx Science.
The city where I have gone on hunger strike just outside these gates, sat claustrophobic on a stalled N train just after Atlantic Avenue, and waited in quiet terror for my father to emerge from 26 Federal Plaza.
The city where I took a beautiful woman named Rama to McCarren Park on our first date and swore a different oath to become an American citizen on Pearl Street.
To live in New York, to love New York, is to know that we are the stewards of something without equal in our world. Where else can you hear the sound of the steelpan, savor the smell of sancocho, and pay $9 for coffee on the same block? Where else could a Muslim kid like me grow up eating bagels and lox every Sunday?
That love will be our guide as we pursue our agenda. Here, where the language of the New Deal was born, we will return the vast resources of this city to the workers who call it home. Not only will we make it possible for every New Yorker to afford a life they love once again — we will overcome the isolation that too many feel, and connect the people of this city to one another.
The cost of child care will no longer discourage young adults from starting a family, because we will deliver universal child care for the many by taxing the wealthiest few.
Those in rent-stabilized homes will no longer dread the latest rent hike, because we will freeze the rent.
Getting on a bus without worrying about a fare hike or whether you’ll be able to get to your destination on time will no longer be deemed a small miracle, because we will make buses fast and free.
These policies are not simply about the costs we make free, but the lives we fill with freedom. For too long in our city, freedom has belonged only to those who can afford to buy it. Our City Hall will change that.
These promises carried our movement to City Hall, and they will carry us from the rallying cries of a campaign to the realities of a new era in politics.
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.
