At Brooklyn Paramount, where New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani delivered his victory speech on November 4, an Indo-Caribbean taxi driver hopes “this will mean an affordable city”.
Hundreds of supporters gathered at the venue, with popular Progressive figures like New York City Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and political commentator Hasan Piker in attendance.
Speaking to TNM, the taxi driver Kuber Sancho Persad added, “Maybe wages can catch up to the rent.”
New York’s housing crisis and high cost of living have been two of the key issues Mamdani campaigned on. Mamdani is pushing for rent-controlled homes, free buses, and city-owned grocery stores in a bid to unburden working and middle-class New Yorkers.
Kuber is among the thousands who canvassed for Mamdani in the hopes of more affordable housing. Kuber canvassed among his passengers and at Mamdani’s outreach to night shift workers, including cab drivers, at the LaGuardia Airport.
“I told my passengers what [Andrew] Cuomo did, how he made things worse for them, how he made the city more expensive and unsafe when he was governor,” Kuber said.
He added, “This is a tremendous moment from four years ago when we were at City Hall on a 15-day hunger strike.”
Back in 2021, after Mamdani was elected Assemblyman of Astoria, he joined the New York Taxi Workers’ Alliance as they went on hunger strike demanding relief against a debilitating debt crisis.
In the early 2000s, Mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg hiked the fee for official medallions that taxi drivers are legally required to hold from USD 200,000 to USD 1 million.
Taxi drivers were forced to take loans and found themselves trapped in heavy debts. Nine taxi drivers died by suicide. The 2021 protests and 15-day hunger strike led to the city government erasing USD 450 million in debt.
Mamdani’s campaign mostly depended on small donations and volunteer efforts from working and middle-class supporters and grassroots collectives. In contrast, multiple news reports have highlighted how billionaires, wealthy landlords, and real estate developers contributed millions of dollars to Cuomo in an attempt to stop Mamdani.
His Muslim and immigrant background has also been the focus of intense Islamophobic and racist narratives from the US right wing, including President Donald Trump.
Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM) Beats, a collective of working-class South Asian New Yorkers, say the election results are a “referendum”.
DRUM was the first such collective to endorse Mamdani. At Brooklyn Paramount, DRUM’s political director Jagpreet Singh, said, “This is a referendum, a show of the power we’ve been able to build both within our community and outside.”
Governing is the next step, he added. “We have eight years to make this a better city … we are going to make sure that the entire city represents our communities and values. Elected officials need to represent the interests and the issues our communities care about.”
Asked about anti-South Asian sentiments after 9/11, Jagpreet said, “Zohran himself said how his aunt had to take off her hijab after the attack. I know many Sikh family members and friends who shaved their heads or took off their turbans. For a long time, we felt othered.”
Mamdani’s victory, he added, helps show that South Asians are part of New York’s fabric as much as any other community. “We can represent ourselves in our authentic identity and not have to hide.”