Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Appears on The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Zohran Mamdani on NYC Mayor's Office transcripts.
Passages
I'm doing well, man. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be back.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceOne hundred percent. It is – "Knicks in five" has become a greeting in New York City.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYou know what? I'll ask the team where they are.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYeah, I think there's often a lot made of a campaign as if it is easier and a governing as if is a harder experience. I think both are challenging. I think what is lost though is that governing comes with the opportunity to deliver. When you're campaigning, you're asking people to believe; you're asking them to put their trust into a politics that's often disappointed them. And when you're governing, you can earn their trust by what you deliver. And so, it is much easier to have a conversation about this vision today when we've been able to pave 175,000 potholes; put the city on a path to universal childcare; win more than $60 million for tenants whose landlords made negligence into a business model. When we have that conversation now, you can point to what these last six months have looked like under democratic socialist principles. When you have it during the campaign–
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceApologies, I didn't mean to use a slur live on this podcast. I just wanted to make sure that we're going to be together in the cell when we're all rounded up. You and me.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceIt means making the choice every day to fight for working people. It means that you believe that everyone in your city deserves to live a dignified life, no matter how much money is in their pocket. And what we've found is that this city is many things all at once. It's both the wealthiest city in the wealthiest country in the history of the world. And it's also a city where one in four people are living in poverty. And so, that you'll often hear the phrase, "Don't sweat the small stuff." To me, being a democratic socialist is also sweating the small. Because for a lot of New Yorkers, it's those things that are the measure of how difficult or easy their life is, whether they're able not only to pay for their rent or their childcare, but whether they are able to also rely on City government to get around their city, to breathe in their city, to experience life in their city. And I think that we've forgotten that at the heart of what we want to deliver is not just the existence of a public sector, it's also the excellence and efficiency of a public sector. I want New Yorkers to be choosing this City government every single day as opposed to feeling as if they're subjected to it.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI'm actually coming on this podcast to let you know that it's now my podcast. I'm sorry, brother.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceIt was this specific production that I was talking about.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI think that to your point, there are a lot of politicians of a variety of ideologies who will speak about housing as a human right, for example, or health care as a human right or they'll talk about dignity. I think where the rubber meets the road is, are you actually willing to ensure that which no one should be priced out of, no one is in fact priced out of it? So, I'll give you an example: childcare. It's hard to find a politician who'll say childcare should be more expensive. They'll generally say it should be more affordable, right? But are you willing to take the step to provide childcare as something that is guaranteed to New Yorkers regardless of how much money they have in their pocket? So, one of our focuses has been universal childcare. Take the successes of free childcare for three-year-olds of Pre-K and extend it to two-year-olds. Now, it's not just as simple as saying, "Oh, yes, I want to do that." You have to also be willing to fight for the revenue you need to do that. And so, [on] day eight of our administration, we secure an agreement with the governor for $1.2 billion that unlocks free childcare for two-year-olds for the first time in New York City. And our dream is that this will extend not only to the 2,000 two-year-olds this year or the 12,000 next year, but every single two-year-old by the end of four years. And it's not just a dream, it's a promise and it's commitment.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI think part of it is that words have lost their meaning over time.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI think if you go back to some of the Democrats that we most admire – FDR, La Guardia – you will see a lot of democratic socialist principles in their vision. And if you think about a lot what we've come to accept as just the facts of life across our country, a lot it is also still driven by democratic socialist principle. Now, if today, you and I were to introduce the idea of a building that lends out books for free. We would be slandered in the same way that so many new ideas are slandering today, and yet that's the library. And the same thing with the Fire Department [and] the same with Public Schools. And it's to say that a lot of politics has been a debate about who deserves what, and I would prefer a politics that debates how we can deliver that to everyone. And to deliver it at a standard that is so good that no matter how much money in your pocket, you opt for that. And I think, at its best, the New York City subway is an illustration where no matter how much money you have in your pocket, you understand that if you want to get from point A to point B, [the] best way is to get on that train.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYou know, I want to be honest with people about what it is that I actually believe in. And I also think what we've seen over many decades is a fearmongering in our politics where anything that we disagree with or anything that portends significant change is described as if it is socialist, you know, at times as if, as if is communist. And the intent of that is to end the conversation there and then. And it especially happens when you're talking about something that would disproportionately benefit working people. And I think it's important because we keep speaking about some of the inequities and inequalities that we see in our city as if they are bugs in a system as opposed to features in them. And if we truly want to reckon with one in four New Yorkers being in poverty, we have to also ask ourselves about if it's important to change the framework with which what we determine success to be. And also, you know, being a Muslim democratic socialist, I thought it would be pretty straightforward.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI mean, my true goal is to deliver for the people of the city, and if in the process of doing so, we can demystify so much of the fear that has become the norm in our politics, I welcome it. And I also think that for a long time, we've discussed democratic socialism as an intellectual debate. We haven't been able to point to what examples look like of it delivering for people. And now we have that just over six months and I think that – it's an incredibly exciting opportunity because there's a reason so many New Yorkers lost faith in City government and the political impulse of lecturing someone as to why they should believe and why they should vote, as opposed to asking yourself, why is it that they lost that faith? When you're governing, you have the opportunity to not just listen, but also then respond in action, not in words. And I think that what's been so exciting is to see that New Yorkers understand that some things will take time and some things that can be done immediately. And if you're able to show that you're doing both, then it is exactly the kind of extension of an arm to say, would you like to join this movement? And I've just heard from so many that they would.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI mean, some of the things that you've said, Social Security, if you go back and see how that was treated when it was first introduced, right, it was described as the "Sovietization of America." And now it is thought of as one of the most American things that we could ever be talking about. And I think about, you know, when you go around New York City and you see these monuments to FDR, to the New Deal, you know you go to Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island – it is a sad reflection of the state of the Democratic Party that a lot of what is said in those programs and those visions today would sound as if it [were] a bridge too ambitious for the party that we belong to. And I think that's part of my hope as a Democrat is how do we ensure that New Yorkers and Americans don't have to look to the history books to be able to find a party platform that speaks about. A freedom from want and a freedom from fear.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceWell, I think that a lot of it comes back to how do you judge the success of your work? And I think you have to judge it by what you deliver. And one of the cornerstones of our campaign was universal childcare, given the fact that in a cost-of-living crisis, childcare is the second highest expense for families in New York City. But we're talking about $20,000 a year for a single child. And in this city, you have to make $334,000 to be able to afford that kind of expense. And to me, it is, how do we move as quickly as possible?
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceThat's the measure across the five boroughs that that's how much your family would have to earn to be able to absorb that kind of a hit. And people earn less than that and they find ways to make it work, but not without it being to the detriment of themselves in their financial situation. And I think that, you know, I never thought that I'd be the guy making it easier for aunties at the family function to pressure you into having a kid, but here we are.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYeah, the independent Rent Guidelines Board established a two-year rent freeze for over 2 million New Yorkers who live in rent-stabilized housing.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceWell, I think I'll just take a step back to tell you, Jon, that the most challenging thing overall was when I came into this position, I expected that it would be difficult in terms of the finances of the city, especially given my predecessor's approach to those finances. What I did not expect was $12 billion worth of difficulty.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYou know – it is – when I've talked about wanting City government to be remade in the image of a struggling New Yorker, one aspect of it is that we be as careful with our money as working New Yorkers are with theirs. And one of the many reasons for that is that this is their money. And when we're looking at – when we looked at that fiscal deficit, what was hard – one of many things that was challenging about it, is that you couldn't blame it on an external reality. You couldn't say, "Oh, it's the fiscal crisis of 2008. Everyone can see what's going on across the country and the world." This was, in many ways, purely of City Halls doing. It was mismanagement and under budgeting, and it had been building for years. And I think that one of my goals is how do we right the ship, not just in a 12-month interval, but frankly on a medium- and long-term. Because if you're just trying to survive on a calendar year basis, you're in many ways going to have to rob Peter to pay Paul. And eventually that bill is gonna come due. And the thing that I'm looking forward to next year is that we're not gonna have to inherit a $12 billion fiscal deficit, no matter how tough it is.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceWell, first, you brought it up, so I just got to say I'm already missing Mitch. We'll continue on. Did you see his comment on the Boston Celtics Instagram page?
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYes, it's one of the best TikTok pages to go to. I never appreciated those cars until I saw those videos.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceGod bless. But to your actual question, I think one of the key things is you have to ask yourself, is this arbitrary or does this have a rationale? And what I mean by that is, for example, with the pension system, we had a deferred payment that was spread out over about 22 years or so. And every year, the cost to the city was increasing, and then it was going to just fall off a cliff in terms of the city – it was gonna go up about maybe $6 billion a year, and then the next year it's gonna be $0. And some of the challenges that we're facing are challenges of this moment specifically because of just how much under-budgeting there was, how much money the city was spending, but not showing on its books for a lot of its different social programs and services. And so, when we looked at that and we said, if you just spread what had already been 22 years, if you'd just extend it by a few years, you would then be able to take savings that you will get the year after as you're scheduled to but instead spread them over. Then you can actually make sure that you're able to steward this in a way that's more healthy, in a medium-term level. Now, I know that there are others who've seen municipalities move around their pension obligations and there's a worry of what does this mean for, you know, are you going to honor that, this, that and the other. The thing that's different in New York City is that we are not only funding our pension systems at a much higher level than many of the other municipalities that are being cited, but also that it's not a question of if we're going to get to 100 percent funded. It's just a question of when in the 2030s we would do so.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI think what you'll find, actually, is there are a lot of people in Albany who do agree with the vision of raising taxes a little bit more on the wealthiest so that everyone can afford life in New York City. But what it is, as you said, is it can't just be one thing. It has to both be a conversation about revenue and a conversation or about savings. So, we actually created something called Chief Savings Officers for the first time, where we had in every single agency and department– CSOs, come on. You're at the water cooler. You know, you're talking to your friend, you're like, "Hey, have you heard about the CSOs? What do you think about the CSOs?"
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceMe and my CSOs were hanging out, catching up. And the CSOs, they found about $1.7 billion in savings across City government, and they're actually going to continue that work. Because when you look at the size of our budget, and you also look at what the approach has been to the finances of our city, we know that there are more savings to be had. And sometimes these are the efficiencies that come from when you're actually pressure testing how we've been doing things. There's savings to had when you actually say that you know, could that contract that you're giving to a consultant actually be done in house? And it can be a lot of times.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceNo, but we do comb through. And there were a number of things where you can't provide a justification for it. And if you can't provide one, then why should the city be spending that money? And a lot of times, it comes from a vision of government where you want to hollow out its capacity and privatize as much of its responsibility. And oftentimes, it's done in the name of fiscal prudence. And yet what you find is you end up overpaying for that external capacity than what it would look like if you invested internally. I mean, you know, we've talked about in the past this – you know, the previous administration had an AI chatbot that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars that was not even usable.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceIt's like – I thought you lost your job. It's just "Ask Jeeves," he's just back.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceAnd you look at that, and it's not just the amount of money, it's also the number of vendors that we went through to get to that point. It just speaks to an approach to contracting that does not actually save you money, and it doesn't build any kind of long-term fluency. What it does is just lock you into commitments that will cost you money and oftentimes won't even perform those services.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceLook, I took offense when they came for socialist icon Rudy Giuliani's energy policy. I said, "Say what you want about me."
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceIt is easy, when there is this much noise, to tell yourself that all of it is exactly that. Tune it all out. But that's also what – It will leave you in an echo chamber. You cannot have it that you are only surrounded by people who agree with you. You might as well just stay home at that point. And I think that the job that I have, that my team has, that our administration has, is, how do you listen to all of it and then separate out what is actually worth engaging with and what is just driven by the algorithm and written in response to what the algorithm responds to and rewards. And I think that the other part of this is, no matter how good we may feel about whatever achievement we have or how this six months has gone, you always have to push yourself because every day is an opportunity to do better for New Yorkers. And I, and I think that's something that I love about this city is, you especially see it in, in kind of sports culture, but I would say even in, in the cultural aspect of the city, there is this sense of having to be the best, of driving yourself each and every day. And yet in our politics, that often feels as if it's missing. There is somehow in a city that is the best in the world at so many things, mediocrity has come to be accepted as the standard in our politics. And I think that it's something that we shouldn't accept any longer.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceThat is what it has to be. And I think if we allow it to continue on the path it's been on for many years, it will become a museum of where working-class people once lived. And we don't want this to be something that people can visit to pay tribute to what it once was. We want it to be a living, breathing testament to that energy. And I think what is one of the most concerning things that I hear is when I turn to someone who is working as hard as they can for the city and I asked them how long their commute home is, and they tell me it's hours because they're going to another state or another city. That's a reflection of a failure to ensure that those who build the city can live in the city, and the reason I think that affordability will be our greatest challenge and also our greatest opportunity is this is what is pushing people out of this city. You cannot disentangle the cost of housing, of childcare, of groceries from the exodus of working-class people from out of the city. Some of these things are New York City specific. Some of them are true across the entire country. And we have to finally change direction so that people can actually afford to live here.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI'm on that Emergen-C. Every day, I take that vitamin C.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceAnd I think what you're saying speaks to the fact that for all of the conversation about an imagined capital flight, there already is a flight. It's just of working-class people. And we know that the racial dynamics of this are also immense. We've seen over the past few decades, our city has lost 200,000 Black New Yorkers. From 2010 to 2019, the population of black children and teenagers declined by 19 percent. And you can feel that in this city, in neighborhoods that are shells of what they once were, and small businesses that don't have those same customers coming through that came in for years, and classrooms that are a little less full. If we want to be honest about what it's going to take, it's not just going to be one day to the next, it's also going to have to be a complete shift. I'll give you an example of this. When we talk about housing, since the early 1960s, New York City started to make decisions that would render it unable to build the level of housing it needed to keep up with demand. To change that–
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceA lot of those are zoning decisions. They're decisions around capacity and also around size of building, scale of building. And you'll walk around the city, you'll see buildings that are incredible, that we associate with our city, yet you could not build them today because they were built prior to those zoning changes having happened. And one of the critical things here is we have to treat the cost-of-living crisis as both a short-term crisis and a long-term crisis. We have to take immediate action. And then we have to do the long-term work of being able to build 200,000 new affordable homes over 10 years, because if you do not have a city that is growing, a city that is building, then what you have is a city that is dying.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceAnd I think anyone growing up in this city has gone through the experience of looking at a construction site in their neighborhood and asking themselves: "Is this for me, or is this going to push me out?" And one of the key things here is that we have to both build more housing than we've ever seen in our city in a long time and do it while strengthening the tenant protections that we have in this city so that we're not forced to choose between the tenants of today and the tenants of tomorrow. And I think to what you said, there are a lot of New Yorkers who rightfully associate even just investments in their own neighborhood as if it is the appetizer to displacement. And we have to show that these things are not, in fact, tied together, that you do not need new residents to invest in that old park. You can do that. And I think, you know, when we go back to this conversation around the fiscal deficit of $12 billion, there is – in that moment, it is all too easy to say, "My only focus right now is to get out of this fiscal crisis, and then everything else we'll figure it out next year." We wanted to also use it as an opportunity to show that we mean what we say – that you do want to still fund your parks, your libraries, your cultural institutions, and do it in a way that annualizes that funding as opposed to making it subject to every single year's budget dance with the City Council. That's also to me what is a critical part of earning those New Yorkers' trust back is that they see those investments in their neighborhood and they'd see it before anyone's ever going to [tell] them that "you may have to leave." We want them to stay.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceWe treated it as if it was part of the physical landscape of the city. And I think that so much of what the approach has been is: "It is what it is. This is how it's always been." And that's just not acceptable. And I, to your point – when you are able to change these kinds of ways that New Yorkers measure their quality of life, it gives them – it's an invitation to them to hope and believe. But if you don't change those things, then why should they take that step?
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceIf you have more than one socialist in a room and there isn't disagreement, then you don't have more than one socialist in a room.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceLook, man, now we have quarters, and I didn't think that day was going to come with the World Cup.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI'm comfortable with disagreement. And I'm uncomfortable with disagreement that doesn't end the conversation entirely. Because I think what motivates a lot of people is, "How do you deliver public safety?" And the thing that I've said time and again is, we cannot have New Yorkers choose between safety and justice. And yes, I am doing the work with our police department, and we have been able to deliver the lowest number of murders and shootings in recorded history. And at the same time, I'm doing the work to close down Rikers Island and ensure that we are actually building the four smaller borough-based jails that brings an end to a horrible chapter in New York City history. And I think to your point, when we're thinking about safety, there cannot be a hierarchy of safety where you experience it more or less depending on where you live in our city or how much money's in your pocket. And there also can't be a definition of safety that is purely after the fact, meaning that how you respond to violence. We also have to do the work of investing so that we prevent violence and to that
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceSo, we've created that Office of Community Safety. We have for the first time in New York City now, a deputy mayor for community safety, Renita Francois, who's doing great work in putting together what is right now a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar budge, in a lot of the very kinds of things that you're talking about. And I think one of the clearest examples to me is we have asked police officers to do almost everything we can think of when it comes to dealing with the failures of not just the social safety net but also violent crime and also and also, and also across the five boroughs. And what we found time and again is that these same officers who signed up to join the Department, to respond to violent crime, to prevent violent crime, are also being tasked with responding to a mental health call. And this is the kind of work that undermines both our ability to deliver on public safety as a whole and it shows that we need to develop a new model here. And so, one of the focuses coming out of the Office of Community Safety is, how do we provide the investment and the support so that when a New Yorker calls for help with a mental health crisis, that they can also receive that help from mental health professionals as well? And that's something that continues alongside the incredible work that the office is doing with gun violence prevention, which is work that we always need to do more and more of, because we know it's an epidemic in this city and across this country. And a lot of that prevention work also comes with investing in gun violence interrupters, in the Crisis Management System. And I've had the privilege of meeting a number of young people who themselves have been victims of gun violence and they've told me how organizations like the ones that New York City invests in are the ones who will respond to them in the moment and make sure that retaliation isn't something they're thinking about, but rather recuperation is what they're focused on.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI think that the first thing you have to do is walk into those conversations without having already made a judgment. And when you walk into it with an open mind, then it means that you can actually have a conversation and make a decision as to how you feel after you have that conversation. And I think in a lot of our politics, we label people and then disregard them entirely. We treat them as if they're not even people worth engaging with. And look, I'll have conversations with more billionaires that oppose my fiscal policies than those that don't, but there's still more things to actually be discussed about with them. And similarly, what I've also found is, to our benefit, the caricature of me and what our administration would mean was so immense that when I walk into a room and I don't immediately strangle three people that are in front of me, people are taken aback that that might not actually be as bad.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI think when we talk about Staten Island, what comes to mind for me is when I went there, I was being protested outside by a number of Staten Islanders who were very supportive of the president, deeply opposed to me. And then when I when inside the restaurant, there were other Staten Islands who were excited about me coming there. And to me, it also shows me that you can just paint a broad brush and say, you know what, I'm not going. It's actually funny that you mentioned it because right after this, I'm going to Staten Island. Yeah, I didn't plan that.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceI got you brother. But yes, you grow up in this city, you have caricatures of so many people and you have to leave those at the door. And you also have to be willing to move beyond them and for some of those conversations to be actually good faith ones to offer people the ability to critique you to you. And I think, you know, sometimes when you're the mayor, you're in a position of power, you want people to just tell you: "Oh, you're incredible. Here's what I love most about your agenda." It's like you're not actually going to get anything done if that's how you want to be treated.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceWell, I think I have a responsibility to be honest with New Yorkers, and when I'm asked a question to answer it honestly, and I also know that for many New Yorkers–
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceYes, yes. And yet I know for many New Yorkers, when they see a clip, it doesn't begin with the question it begins with the answer. I think the focus always has to be on the work that you're doing and how you find a balance between, you know, not giving your kind of a classic, you know, a political deflection where you don't want to answer any of those questions and focusing on the work and still finding that together.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the sourceBrother, anybody who the ICC has called for, I think we should be honoring.
Zohran MamdaniCheck at the source
Every passage above is taken from this recording: NYC Mayor's Office transcripts, Transcript: Mayor Mamdani Appears on The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart.