NYC youth celebrate Mamdani win as first Muslim and South Asian mayor
Reona Alam, a Muslim student at Hunter College and the daughter of Bengali immigrants, first learned that Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani was running for New York City leader about a year ago on social media.
She didn’t think much about it. Desperate about politics after President Trump’s re-election, Alam was excited to learn that a South Asian and Muslim candidate was in the local race, but he thought he wasn’t going to win.
“I was wrong,” said Alam, 19, of the Bronx.
When Mamdani is sworn in as mayor in January, he will be the first Muslim and South Asian New Yorker to lead a city that is home to the largest Muslim population in the United States and an increasingly politically active coalition of South Asian voters. The election of the city’s youngest mayor in more than a century resonated particularly with young South Asians and Muslims, who said they were moved by the success of a candidate who made no apologies for who he was.
“Conventional wisdom would tell you that I’m far from the perfect candidate,” Mamdani, 34, said during his victory speech at Brooklyn’s Paramount Theater on Tuesday. “I am young, despite all my efforts to age. I am Muslim.”
“The most damning thing is that I refuse to apologize for any of this,” said the mayor-elect, an Indian of Ugandan origin.
Barry Williams/New York Daily News
Supporters of Zohran Mamdani gather outside his election night party at the Brooklyn Paramount on Tuesday. (Barry Williams/New York Daily News)
Throughout the campaign, Alam, a former youth leader for the Coalition for Asian-American Children and Families, said she watched Mamdani’s videos, including an explanation of ranked-choice voting in Bengali, the language she grew up speaking. He visited dozens of mosques and delivered a poignant 10-minute speech on Islamophobia in the latter part of the race.
On election night, Alam sat at her bedroom desk refreshing the results, unable to concentrate on her schoolwork. When the race was announced for Mamdani, she shared the news with her immigrant parents. She relished his victory speech as he shouted out the communities of color who helped him get elected, from Uzbek nurses to Ethiopian “aunts.” He revealed the name of India’s first prime minister and called his wife “hayati”, an Arabic term of endearment. As he concluded his remarks, he exited the stage to the sound of an iconic Bollywood song.
“In New York, especially after 9/11, there has always been a lot of racism and Islamophobia around people of color,” said Alam, a graduate of the Manhattan Center for Science and Mathematics. “There was a lot of racist and Islamophobic rhetoric around his campaign. But his victory… it just inspired me to talk more about my identity.”
“New Yorkers,” she added, “have resisted this rhetoric.”
In the week following Election Day, classes across the city discussed the results. It is estimated that around one in ten children in local schools are Muslim.
Amelia Azad, 16, of Midwood, Brooklyn, had exams to study for, so it wasn’t until the next morning that she learned of Mamdani’s victory, thanks to subway posters that some hangers-on had hung overnight. At school, Amelia, who is Muslim and Bangladeshi, and her classmates watched part of her AP government victory speech and discussed their hopes for her mayoralty.
“We were saying, how, you know, he’s so South Asian! It’s nice,” Amelia said. “From the beginning of his campaign, he wore traditional clothing. It was just part of him.”
According to exit polls, 87.2% of South Asian voters voted for Mamdani, especially young people. While 10% of all Asian Americans surveyed were first-time voters, that figure rose to 20% for 18- to 29-year-olds.
Amelia and her younger sister, Amira, even crossed paths with the Queens congressman during his meeting with Bangladeshi voters before the primaries.
Amira, aged 9, already knew some of Mamdani’s key policy axes: free buses and lowering the price of halal food: “We could have a lower price for the bus,” she said. “Maybe he would accept food in public schools, they would replace it with a lot of halal food. Because there is not as much halal food in public schools.”
The primary school pupil, who recently won his student council election on the promise of a swing, hopes to follow in the footsteps of the first elected Muslim and South Asian mayor.
“I also get ideas and try to make them happen,” she said. “Just like Zohran.”
