Stop the billionaires from stealing the NYC election
On the eve of the Nov. 4 New York City mayoral election, the billionaire class is going all out to defeat Zohran Mamdani.
The chief weapon of the wealthy and powerful is racism against Mamdani, who is Muslim and was born in Uganda.
It’s not just Fox News and the New York Post, both owned by the Murdoch family, which are spewing hate nonstop.
Mamdani’s chief opponent — former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo — went on Sid Rosenberg’s bigoted WABC radio talk show. Cuomo laughed when Rosenberg claimed Mamdani would welcome another Sept. 11, 2001, attack.
Mamdani responded eloquently. “Islamophobia is not seen as inexcusable,” he said in a video appeal. “Elected officials can sell T-shirts calling for my deportation.”
Cuomo visits Trump-loving neighborhoods in Staten Island, where he denounces Mamdani for being against statues of genocidal Columbus.
He’s also courting a handful of right-wing synagogues, attacking the Muslim Mamdani for demanding an end to the genocide in Gaza — even as tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of Jewish New Yorkers have joined his call for justice for the Palestinian people, against genocide, and are backing Mamdani’s campaign.
The Nov. 4 election is a referendum on racism. Voting for Mamdani is saying no to Islamophobia and every form of racism and bigotry.
The big money against Mamdani
More than $40 million is being spent to defeat the Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani, who wants to freeze rents and make the buses and child care free.
These absolutely needed reforms horrify former New York Mayor Bloomberg, who has shoveled over $8 million into the Stop Mamdani slush fund. That’s spare change for Bloomberg, whose fortune is estimated at $109.4 billion.
During Bloomberg’s 12-year reign in City Hall, up to a million people per year were detained by police under “Stop and Frisk” policies. The overwhelming number of people who had their Fourth Amendment rights against illegal searches stolen were Black and Brown.
The money-bags mayor also wanted to close 20 firehouses across the city.
Bloomberg let public housing rot while the average monthly rent for a 691 square foot, one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan has risen to $5,494. NYC transit fares are scheduled to rise to $3 in January, 60 times what they were in 1948, when it cost a nickel to take a bus or subway.
But Zohran Mamdani must not be allowed to be elected mayor!
Other donors to the Stop Mamdani campaign include Joe Gebbia, co-founder of Airbnb, who has given $2 million. Also giving money is Alice Walton, whose $111.4 billion fortune comes from the poverty wages paid to two million Walmart workers.
Cuomo’s rotten record
When he was governor, Andrew Cuomo was forced to resign for being accused of being a sexual predator. He compelled thousands of seniors hospitalized with COVID-19 to go to nursing homes, where the disease spread, killing thousands more.
His daddy, Mario Cuomo, was also governor. The elder Cuomo took $8 billion in funds meant for affordable housing and used them to build more prisons than any other governor in New York history.
Zohran Mamdani’s campaign has become a mass movement against decades of capitalist austerity and cutbacks. Even more so it’s a way to say no to anti-Muslim racism that became official policy after Sept. 11, 2001.
It was the struggle of Palestinians against U.S./Zionist genocide — and all the pro-Palestinian demonstrations — that helped spark Mamdani’s campaign.
Mamdani’s program of mild reforms may not seem extraordinary. But it gives people a chance to mobilize against capitalism in the capital of capitalism.
It’s crucial that revolutionary socialists and all progressive people support Mamdani against racism, against Islamophobia, and against Wall Street’s billionaires. For further analysis, please check out “The Mamdani NYC mayoral campaign, ‘Which side are you on?,’'” by Sharon Black.
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