Zohran Mamdani

Because what we're talking about right now

the growing sense amongst New Yorkers that politics is irrelevant to their day-to-day struggles, the inability for our political system to deliver on crises large and small, these are not uniquely New York issues.

These are issues that people feel outside of the city, outside of this country, and

We have an opportunity to show that by serving New Yorkers, we can also showcase a politics that can serve working people wherever they may be.

It comes back to affordability.

The priorities have to be the fulfillment.

I would say that.

The first order of priorities, like ranking best friends, the first order of priority are the three that we built the campaign around.

There are obviously other commitments we made in addition to that.

Five city-owned grocery stores, one in each borough.

The fulfillment of these things are not just critically important because you're fulfilling what animated so many to engage with the campaign, to support the campaign.

but also because of the impact it can have on a New Yorker's life.

There's a lot of politics where it feels like it's a contest around narrative, that when you win something, it's just for the story that you can tell of what you won, but so many working people can't feel that victory in their lives.

The point of a rent freeze is you feel it every first of the month.

The point of a fast and free bus is you feel it every day when you're waiting for a bus that sometimes never comes.

The point of universal childcare is so that you don't have to pay $22,500

a year for a single toddler.

These are not things I have to explain the worth of to you or an intellectual victory.

It is a material one.

And so to me, when we talk about the struggles of our democracy, when we talk about a withering faith in it as a political system, we have to understand that the withering of that faith is intensely connected to the inability of that system to deliver on the needs of the people.