Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Appears on the “The Ebro Laura Rosenberg Show”
Zohran Mamdani on NYC Mayor's Office transcripts.
Passages
It's a funny thing. Because you feel like you're in a different part of your life. But the way that the internet works, all the parts of your life collapse. And then you also look back on yourself of how I used to enjoy when other people's — you know, you'd be watching, like, Timothée Chalamet's high school performance. This is great. And I'm like, “I shouldn't have even watched that.”
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceSome things you expect, some things you do not expect.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI think you have to look at every day as being one you can be better at. And I don't mean that like flippantly. I just mean that sometimes there's such a desire to categorize things in wins and losses that you forget the fact that you have to push yourself every single day. I mean, that's one of the things that I love most about New York City is that the hunger for being as good as you can be is part of what makes people New Yorkers. And for a long time, it's felt like that's only been true in certain sectors, but not in politics. It's felt like we have a culture of exceptionalism in the arts, in sports, in finance, in whatever it may be. But in politics, it's just like mediocrity is accepted simply as what it is. And so, for us, it's that even when you think you've done a good job, you know this thing is going to happen again, right? Like, you don't just get one of these crises or one of these events. I mean, one of the first things that I learned is that this job is, in many ways, it's like you are facing bigger waves than you've ever faced in your life, and that that wave will end and another one will soon come. And so just as important as what you're doing in the moment is what we call an after-action, where you meet after the issue has left everyone's consciousness and people have moved on to the next issue. How do we make sure that our response to this isn't just repetition, but it's pushing yourself? Because to me, in that example, [that] is how you find if you can actually keep up the pace with New Yorkers.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI mean, in the first week, there were two five-alarm fires. Then we had the first snowstorm that we'd seen at that scale in a long time. And then we had the first blizzard in more than a decade. And it was just — I remember this one moment where someone was like, "Yeah, so typically the way that City Hall accounting works is we allocate the amount of money that we've spent on snow removal in the last few years as the amount that we'll have now." And we didn't really have any snow to a significant level last year. I was like, "So what do we do?" And you just realize that you have to come up with a plan in the moment as quickly as you can and then be willing to just pressure-test every single part of it. Because a lot of what — I mean, you guys know this, working in any job, there's the rationale in the job and then the rationale in the world outside the job. But there are things that make sense to people who are working there, and then when you step out of it, you explain it to a friend of yours, and they're like, "I don't know what you're talking about." And one of those things is, "This is how it's been done." A New Yorker does not care if that's how it's been done, if it's not working. And so one of the key things is pushing past a rationale of, "We do it this way," to say, "Why do we do it this way?"
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceUsually that kind of language is hyperbolic. “Yeah, it's like 10 years.” I'm like, “Oh, it is a 10-year storm.”
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceIt was in a long time. It was like since I was watching NY1 waiting for my school to pop up on the list of which—
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI think you have to separate the noise from maybe, you know, the person you cited, to good faith, right?And I think that's the thing: you can never confuse the two where you tell yourself, all critique is bad faith, all critique is noise. If you do that, you make your world smaller and smaller, and you start to just tell yourself that everything you do is right, and you can never end up there. And so distinguishing between the two, a lot of that has to also do with the team you put around yourself, people who are willing to go beyond just saying yes to you, willing to push you as well. And I think what, you know, what we also realize is with the climate crisis, these kinds of storms are only gonna get more intense. They're only going to get worse. And so what may have worked in the past is going to have to be changed now, because the scale of snowfall is at a specific level.I mean, we talk about the rain. We have a sewage system built for rainfall of a hundred years ago. That has intensified.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYou know, and this is also what the other side of the climate crisis looks like in a quality-of-life, day-to-day aspect of it all.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYeah, I think first, I just want to start by saying what you said, which is shout-outs to the team, because so often in politics, it's what we call the principal that gets the credit, right? It's the politician at the heart of it. We're talking about a city workforce of more than 300,000 people who are out there, and they are grinding and they are delivering for the people of the city. When it comes to potholes, we have paved over 191,000 potholes in these first eight months. And a lot of this comes from the feeling that we have as an administration, which is that there's no problem too small, no task too big for us to tackle. And as much as I talk to New Yorkers about the importance of the kind of sweeping, ambitious vision of universal childcare, for example, we also have to deliver on the smallest problems in their life. Because if you leave a pothole on someone's street, they will look at that pothole and say, "How can I trust City government to do anything bigger than this if it can't even do this?" And it's the same thing where anytime government is failing someone, that's where they are losing their faith in even believing in government. That's where they're telling themselves, "Let me just get as far away as I can from government." You know, there are people who feel like my job is to make as much money as possible so I never have to rely on government, because look at what it looks like right now. My job is to win that trust back and not do it by browbeating someone, but by delivering.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceWell, I think there's two things. I'm a big soccer fan. And in soccer, when a team takes a lead, there's a lot of different approaches that they can take. One of them, and we saw this in the World Cup, is when people try to just sit back and protect the lead. They kind of give up everything that got them to that point, and they just wanna hold it. And you start to feel the pressure just build. I use this as an example; I leave it to New Yorkers to judge how we're doing. If New Yorkers believe that we've had a good start here, then our job is not to then say, "Let's not screw it up." You have to keep going. You have to keep pushing. Because if you get into that kind of mindset, where you wake up in the morning and you're trying to not make a mistake, then that's going to paralyze you from any of what you actually have to do. I want us to be so much more than simply managers of the way life is. I want us to make life better for people. And that means going beyond trying to not make a mistake. And it also means that when you make a mistake, you have to move beyond the ego of the fact that it's been made and ask yourself, ‘Why did this happen? How does it never happen again?” And I think to you, the thing that would be most helpful is how do we keep pushing ourselves to be as ambitious as we can be? You know, I believe New York is an exceptional place. I also believe we sometimes suffer from something in New York politics called “New York exceptionalism,” where we say, "Oh, if that worked there, it can't work here.” This is New York. We're different." And in many ways, what you're actually doing is just justifying mediocrity by trying to say that it's a fact of life here in New York City. But I want people to be looking around the world, looking around the country and saying, "Look at what's working over there. Look how we could start to think differently." I mean, one of the key things that is a focus for us when we're thinking about quality of life is trash, garbage disposal, right? We are now gonna be rolling out more than 6,500 Empire Bins so that we're going to stop seeing black bags of trash out on the street in the way that we grew up associating with New York. And it's like, what are the other things that we've come to accept as if they're a fact of life when, in fact, they're not a natural state of being; they're a result of political choices. That's the thing to me where I'm always wondering, and sometimes it's not even looking that far; it's looking at our own history. Because I'll tell you, when you look at mayors like La Guardia, you look at what their ambition was, you look at how far we've strayed over the last many decades in how we've constrained our thinking.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceCalled him everything, man. One good nickname was “Little Flower.” It's a great nickname. It's also a great coffee shop in Astoria if you ever wanna check it out.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI think for me, the 25th anniversary, it's a moment for our city to come together to grieve what was one of the most horrific attacks our city has ever seen. And we know that the focus of that day should be on that day and on the families and the lives that were forever changed by that day, lives that were shattered. And we also know that for many, that day never ended. And what I mean by that is that we are now in a place in our city where more firefighters have lost their lives since 9/11 from 9/11-related health complications than on 9/11. And I've had the privilege of visiting a number of firehouses across New York City where they sent firefighters on that day, some of whom were scheduled to be on, some of whom would just finish their shift; they were supposed to be going home, and they said, "I'm going." And they still have etched in the wall the names of those who were reporting for duty that day. And that, to me, is what the day has to be about, honoring that sacrifice, honoring that service, honoring those families and knowing that this moment is a moment that has to be a solemn one and really recognizing that and being there as much as we can for the entire city. And my memories of the day: I was nine years old, and at that age, you don't fully grasp the horror of what it is that we're talking about, but you do have a sense that something horribly wrong has happened. And my memory had more to do with the sense of panic amongst those in whom I would never see it, adults, teachers and people who were in the hospital who had no way of grappling with what they had just learned. Early dismissal, everyone going home, a student knowing their parent was in Lower Manhattan that day, trying to find out if they're okay. That's also the panic, is the sense of, where are my loved ones? And this is a city where so many people's loved ones were killed that day. What are your memories?
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI think I always bring myself back to what the point is, what my job is; and it's to serve the city, and it's to ensure that the day is one where it's not about me, it's about the city. This was an attack on the city. And when you go to that museum, and you see all of the different New Yorkers coming from all backgrounds, all parts of our city, and you realize that what this day should be about is a commemoration of them, of their families. And I look forward on the 25th anniversary, I will be there at the event as I was last year to commemorate those who were stolen from us, and in all of the events around that. Because what we — when we're talking about the fear that you felt, that was something that so many New Yorkers felt. And at the same time, there were New Yorkers who felt that fear and ran towards the towers to try and save people. And when I went into these firehouses and they were explaining to me that the names that you're seeing on the wall, some of those people were supposed to be at home. It's hard to comprehend that. Talking about somebody who had just finished a 12-hour shift is a change of shift, and they choose to get back on the truck. That's what sacrifice looks like; that's what—
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceAnd some of it is just a way to survive, right?
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYou know, it's, for us, the question is just: how do we get to the outcome? And a lot of times it's a conversation around the outcome; it's not actually getting you there. We just want to put the trash in the bins.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI wanted to be straight with people. So, I think — I'm glad you brought up the Van Wyck because, to me, you know, like when my friends talk to me about the Van Wyck, it's almost like a marker of time.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYou could have like a T-shirt, right? I know that the state is hard at work on the Van Wyck. That is a state thing. But my last — the last update I've received is [that] we're looking at completion this fall. That's the last thing I was told. And I know there are a lot of people who are not going to believe that until the day that that is completed. And I do not begrudge you that. When it comes to the BQE, we're talking about the one section that is City-controlled. And that's what's so important for me is we have autonomy over this one section. So, it's up to us. It's a responsibility on us. I can't say, “You got to go ask this person or that person.” And this is one of the areas where it's safe right now, but that's really being tested because we're talking about a BQE that was designed for 50,000 cars that now has more than 100,000 every single day, not to mention the much heavier trucks that are on the BQE. So, we're talking about a timetable of over a decade where we will be able to sustain that level of car traffic by creating a temporary bypass so that those cars, while we're doing these, while we're overhauling the BQE, this central part, do not have to go onto local streets. That they can actually be on an adjacent, temporary highway that can then bring them back onto a BQE that is functioning while we make these kinds of changes.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYes, you can expect that. We are rolling out 2,000 seats of free childcare this fall. So, when school opens, that's with 2,000 seats of free childcare. And that is so exciting because we're talking about free childcare, which means that a family doesn't have to pay $20,000 a year for that same seat. Next year, we're going from 2,000 seats to 12,000 seats. So, we're gonna be expanding the neighborhoods that we're present in with this. And then by the end of year four, we will be for every single child in New York City that is two years old will have free childcare.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceWell, I think one of the key things is we also want to look at what was working in prior administrations and then build on that. Sometimes there's a temptation where if you have criticisms of a past administration, you say everything they were doing is something we wanna throw out and we wanna restart it again. We want to ask ourselves what's actually working here. The doula program is an example of something that is important. And also, these are the kinds of approaches we need to take if we're serious about combating maternal health and mortality that we're especially seeing for Black women across New York City. We have to be approaching it in this kind of a multifaceted way.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceThere's always more work to be done, for me, for everyone. And the reason for that is we're talking about the very New Yorkers who have been pushed out the most from this city, right? Whenever I talk about raising taxes on the wealthiest, people will respond with what is generally a myth of capital flight. But the flight that's actually happened: 200,000 Black New Yorkers have left the city in the last few decades. There are so many people who will still tell you they're New Yorkers, but now they live in South Carolina. They live in other parts of the country because they couldn't afford to live in this city. And you can feel that in neighborhoods across the city; you can feel that in classrooms across the city. And so, for me, it's — always ask yourself, how has this city left people behind and how can we actually start to show up? So, we're talking about maternal health; we're talking about the mortality rates that are disproportionately affecting Black women. We also have to ask ourselves: how do we start to build housing that isn't just increasing supply but also is increasing affordability within that supply at the same time, while delivering the strongest tenant protections this country has ever seen. And then also asking yourself, how do we do similar initiatives for stability for homeowners? Because a lot of Black homeowners — especially older Black homeowners — have had to deal with the scourge of deed theft. So, we went out and created the first-ever Office to Prevent Deed Theft. This is an office that will actually proactively go out there to talk to our aunties and uncles who are being taken advantage of by people who know that they want to pass their home onto their next generation and are instead going to be signing their home over to someone they've never met before.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceIt's more about proactively providing them with legal advice. When it comes into the actual accountability for someone who's engaging in deed theft, that's through partnership with the district attorneys. And they're also taking it seriously.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceShout-outs to MJ. Shout-outs to the bootleggers who sold him those three T-shirts, because that's one of the things I also love. I've never even seen some of the T-shirts people have worn here. I'm like—
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYou know, I love it. Just go out there. Shout-outs to MJ. That's really lovely, man. Thank you. ###
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source
Every passage above is taken from this recording: NYC Mayor's Office transcripts, Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Appears on the “The Ebro Laura Rosenberg Show”.