New York City Mayor-elect Zoran Mamdani defended diversity, equity and inclusion policies that President Donald Trump is seeking to repeal.
Zoran Mamdani’s all-female transition team
These are members of New York Mayor-elect Zoran Mamdani’s all-female transition team.
New York City Mayor-elect Zoran Mamdani has unequivocally defended the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Policy (also known as DEI) that President Donald Trump is aiming to repeal on November 12th.
Speaking at a ribbon-cutting for the National Urban League’s new headquarters in New York, the 34-year-old political genius praised the civil rights group’s mixed-use project as “worthy of the great legacy that so many Black New Yorkers have built here in Harlem.”
“In a time when we are taught that DEI is a term of slur, that it belongs to Black people, when in fact it represents the realization of ideals that make so many of us proud to be New Yorkers,” Mamdani said, to cheers and applause from the majority Black crowd.
Although President Trump has denounced DEI as “tyrannical,” Mamdani was not the only speaker at the event to unapologetically defend the concept.
“We want this to stand as a lighthouse in this political climate where civil rights protections are under attack and rolled back, and programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion are being dismantled by some,” National Urban League President Marc Morial said of the new building.
In addition to affordable housing, the 17-story building will also include offices for the Harlem Studio Museum, which showcases Black artists. UNCF, which provides scholarships to black college students, and the Urban Civil Rights Museum Experience, which Morial says will be “the first museum ever dedicated to the northern part of the civil rights movement.”
Morial, a former New Orleans mayor, added, “We will not back down, back down, or reverse course in our commitment to equal opportunity and, yes, diversity, equity, and inclusion in America today.”
“In this day and age of stripping away DEI … we didn’t need more empowerment centers,” veteran civil rights activist Reverend Al Sharpton said in a speech shortly after Mamdani.
This sentiment stands in stark contrast to the Trump administration, which has moved to punish institutions that practice affirmative action, such as universities that seek to diversify their student bodies and law firms that seek to hire employees from a wide range of backgrounds.
Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights, told the Senate Judiciary Committee in July: “Either DEI takes care of itself or we abolish it.”
mamdani quotes from the bible
The event was steeped in religion. The Rev. Orcella Hughes, pastor of St. Luke’s African Methodist Episcopal Church in Harlem, opened the meeting by saying, “Fairness is not charity, but God’s justice.”
“It’s tempting to say this is an ordained day of the Lord,” said New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who doesn’t usually mention religion. “I feel like a church.”
Mamdani clearly knew his audience and came.
“Just as the governor reminds us of the church, I also remember the words of the Bible,” said Mamdani, the first Muslim elected mayor of America’s largest city. “Because what is needed by many people in this room, in this city, in this country is faith. Faith that life can be more than this, faith that we can dream of more than just struggling.”
“And as James 2:14 reminds us, faith without works is death,” he continued. “And to be here at the unveiling of these works is to remind us that that faith was not in vain. It is to remind us of our responsibility to make that faith a reality.”
Mamdani receives a warm welcome
Mamdani lost the majority of black voters to former Governor Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary in June, but won over black voters and won a majority of black voters in the general election.
His growing ties to the black community were evident in the enthusiastic response he received on November 12th.
Other speakers also mentioned Mamdani. Mr Hughes approved and passed a reference to “the changes we are currently seeing in our city” during the convocation. And Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who refused to endorse Mamdani in the general election, included him in a reference to Trump’s threat to penalize New York for electing a democratic socialist.
“We will fight any attack on this city,” she said. “We will fight any attacks against our new mayor, who has had an excellent campaign.”
One participant spoke positively about Mamdani, although he did not vote because he did not support all of Mamdani’s policies, including free buses, freezing rents on rent-stabilized apartments, and universal child care.
“I hope he makes good on his promise,” said Tremaine Rochfort, who works at Virginia Union University, whose campus is in the same building. It is the first historically black college to exist in New York City. “I love his spirit.”
“Right now, I think the approach for a lot of people is kind of a wait-and-see approach,” Rochfort said. “I’m rooting for him.”
