&imwidth=800&imheight=600&format=webp&quality=medium "In 250th anniversary address, Mamdani offers a contrast to Trump’s vision for US")
In a starkly pro-immigration speech on the 250th anniversary of the US, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani challenged President Donald Trump’s view of the nation and his stand against immigrants without naming him directly.
Mamdani criticised Trump’s immigration policies while sitting behind a City Hall desk that once belonged to George Washington. He was flanked by recently naturalised US citizens, and rebuked the view held by “the powerful”.
“America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin. The rest of us, they insist, should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit. How small they are. How weak, how unoriginal,” he said.
Mamdani’s move to deliver an address marking the country’s semiquincentennial is being seen as another major step onto the national political stage after three House candidates endorsed by him defeated incumbents and incumbent-endorsed candidates in Democratic primaries last month. He timed his speech hours before Trump’s address at Mount Rushmore.
“Hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants arrived with stomachs aching from a famine manufactured by imperial cruelty,” Mamdani said. “Chinese sailors settled in what is today Chinatown. Millions more travelled under the Statue of Liberty and through Ellis Island. Jewish people escaping pogroms, Italians fleeing poverty. Syrians seeking economic opportunity,” he added.
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Mamdani’s address also assumes significance as it comes after the Supreme Court struck down Trump’s order on birthright citizenship.
“The work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, that work endures, and it belongs to us all. It belongs, too, to our newest Americans, those standing here with me today, all of whom were recently naturalized,” Mamdani said.
“Nearly a decade ago, I too felt what you feel, the joy of no longer being just a New Yorker, but an American, too,” said Mamdani, who was born in Uganda and was naturalized as a US citizen in 2018.
He called “division” the “oldest” and “cheapest” trick in politics.
“At every moment in our past, those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power and enrich themselves by turning us against one another,” Mamdani said.
The New York mayor further said that the ideals upon which the US was built are strong enough to endure any authoritarian regime.
“What a responsibility each of us possesses to prove ourselves worthy of all those who came before. What power each of us holds to bring America ever closer to the greatness so many have seen when they looked upon these shores, the greatness that for 250 years has been America,” Mamdani concluded.
