Hi everyone,
Socialist Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has announced that he and his Syrian wife, Rama, will depart the lowly borough of Queens after being sworn into office and will move into the luxe Gracie Mansion on the Upper East Side. The traditional mayor's residence offers sweeping views of the East River, a private chef, and loads of other amenities so Mamdani can live in luxury while abolishing private property.
Mamdani, who lived in a rent stabilized apartment in the district he represented in the New York State legislature, has said that he's a man of the people who intends to fight for New York's working class, immigrant contingent, of which he claimed to be one. But now, like George Jefferson, he'll be movin' on up to the East Side, to a deluxe home maintained by the City's Parks and Recreation Department.
You could say that Mamdani is not the first socialist to abandon his working class roots, but he never had any. His father is a professor of anti-colonialism at Columbia University, and his mother is an Oscar-nominated filmmaker. They have a massive compound in Uganda with views of Lake Victoria. They could all live in the lap of luxury in Uganda but instead live here, a place they claim to hate, with goals of remaking it into something it is not.
It's not even remotely surprising that Mandani would abandon his convictions and move to the Upper East Side. It's de rigueur. It's basic. It's status quo. Those who claim to be of the people rarely are. Most often, they use that claim to bolster their own position, to line their own pockets, and to advance their lot in life while leaving those to whom they made the promise behind in their crime-ridden, vermin-infested neighborhoods.
Libby