Zohran Mamdani to deliver speech to mark US’s 250th birthday in New York

New York mayor’s speech cut ideological counterpoint to policies of president, who will deliver his own remarks later today

New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani , exalted the city’s legacy of immigrants on Friday in a historically laden, ideological counterpoint to a US semiquincentennial address that was expected later in the day from Donald Trump – who has sought to deport immigrants en masse throughout his second presidency.

Speaking from behind a desk at New York ’s city hall that belonged to the US’s first president, George Washington, and which itself is a century older than the Resolute desk in the White House, Mamdani was surrounded by naturalized citizens like himself as he listed the waves of immigrants who shaped the city.

“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 traveled under the Statue of Liberty and through Ellis Island. Jewish people escaping pogroms, Italians fleeing poverty. Syrians seeking economic opportunity.

“Despite laws enacted by the federal government to bar their entry” and other hardships, “immigrants made homes here in New York City, and they helped to make New York City”.

Days after the US supreme court rejected an effort by Trump – Mamdani’s fellow New Yorker – to end birthright citizenship and affirmed that nearly all people born on US soil are US citizens, Mamdani on Friday said: “That legacy of every generation of Americans insisting that the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness extends to them, too, is no relic of the past.”

The speech from Mamdani had been billed by mayoral press officials as an opportunity to reflect on New York City’s “role in our national history” and “its position as the nation’s symbolic gateway”.

Born in Uganda, moving to New York City with his family when he was seven, and obtaining US citizenship in 2018, Mamdani offered a history lesson on how Philadelphia may have been the crucible of American democracy but New York City was where, in 1776, it “simmered under the yoke of oppression” of British rule from which the US would successfully free itself.

New arrivals to the US, he said, would see “land lush and teeming with life.”

“They saw a towering monument to freedom, her torch glowing [a] world wide welcome. They saw New York City. They saw America.”

He made it a point to say: “The city I see today looks very different than the one that greeted George Washington in July of 1776.”

And, to the recently naturalized citizens at the address, Mamdani said: “You each hold a special power – the power to determine what America means.”

But he sought to draw a contrast to powers being amassed in Trump’s America: “The powerful have always known their answer. America, in their view, is an arena of supremacy where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal.

“America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes. 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.”

Mamdani at the start of his address paid tribute to explorers Giovanni da Verrazzano and Henry Hudson – but notably left out Christopher Columbus, widely viewed less as an explorer than a colonizer.

His address came days after three congressional candidates endorsed by the democratic socialist mayor won their races in the city – and others flying under the same political flag outperformed centrist Democrats in other solidly liberal urban enclaves, including Philadelphia, Denver and Washington DC.

On Friday, Mamdani called for resistance against those who would divide the people: “Those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power and enrich themselves by turning us against one another. Division is the oldest trick in politics and the cheapest.”

He furthermore appealed to patriotism – but a form of it very different from the one Trump is bound to offer later on Friday.

“Patriotism has never been about pretending our nation is without flaws,” the New York mayor said. “Patriotism is every act of righteous dissent. It is every march led under the heavy sun. It is every protest held a decade before its time. It is precisely because we love this nation that we will not leave it.”

Trump later on Friday was set to deliver an address at Mount Rushmore, where he will commemorate the US’s 250th anniversary.

The celebration is expected to include fireworks, military bands, aviation flyovers and a salute to the six branches of the armed forces.