Zohran Mamdani Takes Up Bernie Sanders’s Torch
Bernie Sanders clearly sees the future of his movement in Zohran Mamdani, who is now poised to become the next mayor of New York City. In inheriting Sanders’s movement, Mamdani inherits a daunting set of questions and challenges.
Zohran Mamdani’s laser focus on the economic plight of working people and his commitment to building a grassroots movement come out of the Bernie Sanders playbook.
On Saturday, a modest crowd braved on-and-off thunderstorms to pack Brooklyn College’s 2,400-capacity Claire Tow Theater for the latest stop on Bernie Sanders’s “Fighting Oligarchy” tour. The town hall was far from the biggest stop on the tour, which drew tens of thousands to rallies earlier this year.
For many in attendance, though, this event was freighted with symbolism. It was a homecoming for Sanders, who briefly attended Brooklyn College and grew up close by. And it was the first time on the barnstorming tour that the Vermont senator was sharing the stage with Zohran Mamdani, the young democratic socialist front-runner for New York City mayor, who spoke at length about his political debt to Sanders.
“It was Bernie’s campaign for the presidency in 2016 that gave me the language of democratic socialism to describe my politics,” Mamdani said. “And it was Bernie’s Queensbridge rally on October 19, 2019, that was the first political event of my campaign for state assembly.”
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