'Liberation coming to City Hall': Thousands brave freezing temperatures to welcome Mamdani as New York City mayor
Thousands of New Yorkers braved freezing temperatures and long lines on New Year's day 2026 to welcome Zohran Mamdani in as the city's first Muslim mayor on Thursday, as he promised to deliver on his left-wing agenda that tapped into deep economic fustration in the US's biggest city.
"They want to know if the left can govern. They want to know if the struggles that afflict them can be solved," Mamdani said outside City Hall.
"We will do something that New Yorkers do better than anyone else: we will set an example for the world," he added in a 24-minute speech.
New York's City Hall and Broadway in Lower Manhattan were awash with blue and yellow Zohran beanie hats, while 90's R&B music blared from speakers. Many attendees were clutching hand-warmers alongside Palestinian keffiyehs. Some held back sniffles as they endured the cold temperatures.
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Mamdani emphasised the cost of living issues that were central to his mayoral campaign, as he promised to help those "betrayed by the established order".
Left-wing allies Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also delivered remarks.
But for thousands of attendees, Mamdani's victory transended even economic concerns.
For Asad Dandia, coming out in the cold on New Year's day was well worth it, after he supported Mamdani's upset mayoral campaign as an informal adviser.
"It's insane we are going to have a Muslim guy in command of City Hall," Dandia told Middle East Eye. "Islamaphobia, anti-Muslim bigotry [and] anti-Arab bigotry lost and we won."
Dandia said that Mamdani has "set the bar high" to succeed but he was committed to the new mayor he had come to work with when he was a little-known state assemblyman.
"New Yorkers are not supposed to like their mayor. This is a new thing for me… for the first time, we can actually say we love the mayor," he added.
Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian activist who was held in ICE detention for more than 100 days without charge and whose arrest sparked nationwide demonstrations, was also in attendance. He was arrested for his leadership role in pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University.
He told MEE he hoped Mamdani's rise would mark an end to the marginalisation of Palestinian political expression in the US.
"I just hope that Palestinian advocacy is not treated differently than any other advocacy in this country - that there is no longer a Palestinian exception to everything," Khalil said.
While welcoming Mamdani's commitment to justice, he stressed that support must be coupled with accountability.
"We need to keep supporting him, but also pushing him to do more, especially when it comes to free speech, immigrant rights and Palestine, in this city and in this country."
'A mayor we can love'
The City Hall event is Mamdani's second swearing-in ceremony. After the clocks struck midnight, bringing in 2026, Mamdani took his first oath of office at an abandoned subway stop. He used his grandfather's Quran and a 200-year-old copy of the Quran on loan from the New York Public Library at the private ceremony that had just a handful of attendees.
Mamdani's wife, the artist Rama Duwaji, held out the copies of the Qurans from which Mamdani took his oath of office. Also in attendance at the midnight ceremony was Eric Adams, his predecessor, who served a single term as mayor and was known for his frequent visits to and defence of Israel.
There were 4,000 tickets to the City Hall event and a neighbouring block party was set up to accommodate another 40,000 spectators, who watched Mamdani's second swearing in on large screens. The party was held adjacent to City Hall along seven blocks in Lower Manhattan between Murray and Liberty Streets.
The 34-year-old, who is also New York's first mayor of South Asian descent and the first to be born in Africa, is among only a handful of US politicians to be sworn in on the Quran.
Mamdani's faith and his ethnic background were front and centre during his campaign, where he focused on celebrating the diversity of New York.
In several social media videos, Mamdani spoke about the effects of the 9/11 attacks on New York and the subsequent rise in Islamophobia.
Other videos featured the experiences of everyday New Yorkers, including many of its Muslim and immigrant communities.
During the campaign trail, he ran an avowedly leftwing campaign, mobilising thousands of volunteers, where he promised rent control and free bus travel - a platform funded by a proposed increase in taxes on the wealthiest residents of New York City.
He was also unapologetically pro-Palestine in a city that was convulsed by protests against Israel's war on Gaza.
"It's all at once believable and unbelievable," Abby Stein, a transgender activist rabbi who supported Mamdani, told MEE.
"It almost feels like a shock. But at the same time this was a long time coming," Stein said. "Everyone around us was not just telling us we didn't stand a chance… the media didn't even want to cover the campaign launch."
Stein was one of tens of thousands of Jewish-American New Yorkers who supported Mamdani's campaign and voiced solidarity with Palestinians amid Israel's genocidal war on Gaza.
"We had thousands of Jews knocking on hundreds of thousands of doors… we got hundreds of thousands of Jews who voted for the first Muslim mayor, for the first immigrant mayor in decades," she said.
"We believe Palestinian liberation is what will help us in the battle against antisemitism, in the battle against Islamophobia," she said, adding that a "vision of true liberation" was coming to City Hall.
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