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New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani gave a speech focusing on the power of immigrants and the importance of immigration rights at City Hall on Friday morning to mark America’s 250th birthday.
He was surrounded by recently naturalized citizens and sat behind the George Washington desk.
Mamdani himself is also a naturalized citizen, and the topic is important to him personally. He arrived in the U.S. from Uganda when he was seven years old.
The speech was given hours before President Trump is expected to give his America 250 address in South Dakota.
“Here, at City Hall, as I sit behind George Washington’s desk, I cannot see all of America. But like so many who came before, I can see New York City. The city I see today looks very different from the one that greeted George Washington,” Mamdani said.
Mamdani on “the promise of America”
Mamdani began his remarks by talking about immigrants coming to New York City and seeing it is an opportunity to forge a new life.
“That legacy of every generation of Americans insisting that the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is no relic of the past,” Mamdani said. “It is what brought my family to this city when I was 7 years old. My family did not arrive by boat, although we saw the Statue of Liberty from the window of the plane. Even from the air, we could make out the promise of America. The promise of the beautiful, patriotic work of rendering America, year after year, a little more faithful to its founding ideals.”
Mamdani on what “American exceptionalism” means to him
Mamdani then spoke about the idea of American exceptionalism.
“American exceptionalism, the conventional wisdom tells us, makes our freedom a little more free. It’s how we dug the Erie Canal and irrigated the West. It’s why children in faraway lands grow up dreaming of one day moving here,” Mamdani said. “And yet the irony is that the story of America has so often been written by those who were told by others with power and influence and wealth that they were anything but exceptional. For generation after generation, we have been told that when the world has sent its people to our shores, it has not sent its best.”
He pointed to the waves of immigrants who were in poverty when they arrived and believed in various different religions.
“We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than anyone else. The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional because here nothing is fixed into place. The frontier may be closed, we may have walked on the moon, but the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, that work endures, and it belongs to us all,” Mamdani said.
Mamdani on “the forces of division”
Mamdani then addressed other recently naturalized citizens.
“You each hold a special power. The power to determine what America means. The powerful have always known their answer. America, in their view, is an arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal. America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes. America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin,” Mamdani said. “The rest of us, they insist, should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit. How small they are. How weak. How unoriginal.”
Mamdani pointed to prior efforts to turn Americans against each other.
“Division is the oldest trick in politics, and the cheapest. But time and again, including 250 years ago, those forces of division have been vanquished by the forces of progress,” Mamdani said.
Mamdani on asylum seekers, Trump administration policies
Mamdani quoted Thomas Payne, who wrote about America being an asylum “for the persecuted lovers of civic and religious liberty.”
“And yet today, too many of our leaders do not believe in a vision of this nation as an asylum for the persecuted, but rather as one that persecutes those seeking asylum,” Mamdani said.
The mayor said we now see “a city of contradictions in a nation of contradictions.”
“We see the wealthiest country in the history of the world, one where children go to sleep hungry while the world’s first trillionaire hungers for more. We see monopolies that dominate every industry and oligarchs that buy elections. We see masked agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans,” Mamdani said.
Mamdani said despite the many shortcomings, hardworking people also show the promise of America.
“We see it just as clearly in every American who still believes this country belongs to we, the people. We see America each time neighbors link arms with neighbors without asking how long they’ve lived here or what papers they have as ICE invades our neighborhoods,” Mamdani said. “We see America each time working people demand more, not just for themselves, but for their fellow Americans.”
Mamdani on “love it or leave it”
The mayor said people seeking change in America are frequently told: “love it or leave it.”
He offered his response.
“But patriotism has never been about pretending our nation is without flaws. Patriotism is every act of righteous dissent. It is every march led under the heavy sun. It is every protest held a decade before its time. It is precisely because we love this nation that we will not leave it,” Mamdani said. “Those ideals upon which our nation was built, they are strong enough to endure any authoritarian regime, but only if we reach for them. Ours is a nation working each day towards the perfection in which it was conceived. A nation striving each day to better itself. Therein lies the work of America – the striving, the bettering, the reaching for perfection.”
