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Why Zohran Mamdani wants to “demystify” the political process (Full video interview) - Video học tiếng Anh
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Why Zohran Mamdani wants to “demystify” the political process (Full video interview)
Why Zohran Mamdani wants to “demystify” the political process (Full video interview)
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Phụ đề (418)
0:00
Astead, how are you? I'm doing well. Mayor elect, how are you?
0:02
Thank you for joining us. I was trying to be the host for a second.
0:05
No, I was actually gonna wear a suit, but I decided that was your thing and not mine.
0:09
Did you buy a new one for the...
0:10
My culture is not a costume.
0:12
Did you buy a new one for the inauguration?
0:14
No, but
0:17
I might be a little behind on
0:19
thinking about the coat.
0:30
You know, I we're glad to talk to you at this point
0:32
because, you know, we want to focus on the transition,
0:35
not only how you all have conducted it, but also you're how thinking about
0:38
how it informs the, you know, term ahead.
0:41
We know that kind of mayoral transitions can sometimes be the high watermark
0:44
for elected officials.
0:45
I recently saw that you were plus 15 in your own favorability.
0:48
How do you reverse what has been a historic trend?
0:51
How do you make sure that this moment in office, that you're
0:54
taking office, is not the, the end of something, but the beginning?
0:58
You know, I think I
1:00
am aided by the fact that I have not given much weight
1:04
to polls and favorability in the past,
1:08
which is part of the reason why I'm sitting in front of you,
1:09
because I don't I didn't even have enough recognition
1:11
to have favorability done at the beginning of, of this race.
1:15
So, I think it it comes back to the fact
1:17
that we ran a race on an affordability agenda.
1:21
It spoke to New Yorkers
1:24
living in the most expensive city in United States.
1:27
We have to now deliver on that agenda.
1:29
I think kind of the premise of your point is that
1:33
this is the moment of hope, and then the question of what comes next.
1:37
And even beyond the transition
1:40
as a high watermark, oftentimes campaigns, there's
1:43
there's already a temptation of nostalgia for what the campaign was.
1:47
We have to ensure the campaign is not the story we look back on.
1:50
It's the path to the story that we've yet to start.
1:52
And I think that comes back to delivery, that comes back to freezing
1:56
the rent, making busses fast and free, delivering universal childcare.
1:59
You have to transform people's lives in a way that they can actually touch
2:03
and feel and hold on to,
2:04
so that they're not just grasping at the memories of what the struggle was like.
2:08
I feel like the first clues of how you all plan to do
2:10
that came in the transition.
2:12
You all had some kind of unique moments, but there aren't these
2:14
explanatory videos about semi-mundane kind of process things.
2:18
Baseball cards for staff appointments.
2:20
We were at the event that you all held last week at the Museum of Moving Image.
2:24
Why do that stuff?
2:25
What is the goal of those type of events?
2:27
I think there's, there's a temptation when you win.
2:31
We've seen it in the past to say, "now, trust me, you can go home."
2:35
The point of me winning is that you don't have to worry about politics anymore.
2:38
The point of me winning is we keep fighting for the same agenda together.
2:43
And that means you bring people along with you,
2:47
and you also demystify what it is that you're doing.
2:50
I mean,
2:52
this transition period is probably the most opaque period,
2:55
typically, because it's between a campaign and governance.
2:58
And most New Yorkers are never brought into it.
3:01
It's usually insiders only.
3:03
Yeah.
3:03
And I think that's both in the way that it's funded
3:05
and it's the way that it's also spoken about.
3:07
And we wanted New Yorkers to be at the heart of that, because
3:11
most people didn't even know that there's no public funding for transitions.
3:14
And so we've been asking people to donate to a transition.
3:17
The first thing we have to educate them about is what is a transition?
3:20
What is this funding used for?
3:21
And I've had so many people ask me, what do you mean
3:24
you have to pay for office space?
3:25
What do you mean you have to pay for payroll, health care, inauguration.
3:30
These are often things that are not brought up, because
3:33
you fundraise in the manner of previous administrations,
3:36
whose average donations were north of $1,000 per person, and ours,
3:41
you know, I think more than 95% of our donations are below $250.
3:45
And I think that's just that is one aspect of how you bring people into this.
3:50
Sounds like the demystifying efforts are connected to what,
3:53
you know,
3:53
has been described as inside out strategy, that to the goal of delivering,
3:57
you feel as if you have to keep the public engaged.
3:59
You have to keep that public pressure going.
4:01
You do.
4:01
And I think there's often a description as if the campaign ends
4:06
and governance begins with the implication that you leave people behind.
4:10
And, in many ways, you have to keep going in the same kind of manner.
4:15
How's that get harder once you're in office?
4:17
To your point about the ways that campaigns
4:18
and transitions kind of create a sense of unity.
4:21
You know, once the inauguration happens, you know, everything becomes Mayor
4:25
Mamdani's problem.
4:26
How do you make sure,
4:27
how how do you reverse the trend of public disengaging at that moment?
4:30
I think you have to do the work to create actual opportunities
4:34
for engagement as opposed to vague invitations.
4:37
So, for example, we put together an event for 12 hours
4:42
called The Mayor's Listening, where, as you were saying, your team was there.
4:45
For 12 hours, I sat at the Museum of the Moving Image,
4:49
and I listened to New Yorkers.
4:50
More than 140 New Yorkers came to share their stories with me.
4:54
And the point of that is not just to say I listened.
4:57
It's to actually take what they're saying, and then act upon it.
5:00
And some of the concerns were large.
5:04
They were the concerns of undocumented New Yorkers sharing with me
5:08
the immense fear that they live with on a day to day basis, the exhaustion
5:12
that it leaves them with, the anxiety whenever they leave their home.
5:16
To a New Yorker who came to me and said,
5:18
"my number one issue is what time is the construction on the Van
5:21
Wyck going to take place,"
5:21
because it used to be during the nighttime and now it's during the day.
5:24
I think this idea that in fact, governing could be informed by the people
5:28
you were governing
5:29
for, as opposed to treating New Yorkers as if they're just subjects.
5:32
And I think that's
5:34
that's the approach we've tried to take over the course of the transition.
5:37
And, and also the understanding that
5:41
in order for
5:41
people to act upon something, they have to know about something.
5:45
So that's not just "what is a transition."
5:47
We even take that approach to rights, you know, in this moment
5:50
when so many New Yorkers are fearful of ICE agents and the potential
5:56
of immigration enforcement, as we've seen it take place across the city,
6:01
we thought it was important to remind every New Yorker of their own rights.
6:05
And and so that the only way they can exercise them is if they know about them.
6:08
Yeah.
6:09
You know, is there any argument, though, that, like,
6:10
you know, this is a little glitz and glamor?
6:12
I mean, we, our folks were there.
6:13
These were largely supporters of yours I want to hear more about like,
6:17
did you hear criticism?
6:18
Did you hear, any critiques of your campaign
6:21
from some of those New Yorkers you sat down with?
6:23
What sat with you
6:24
that wasn't necessarily something that was already part of your agenda.
6:27
You know, there I think any gathering of New Yorkers has to have some critique.
6:32
Otherwise, you know, it's not a gathering of the audience.
6:34
And I think there's there's critique
6:38
in a fear of, "are you
6:41
are you going to be able to deliver on these things,"
6:43
because there's a fear of, "should I have believed in this," and my job
6:47
and our job in building a team is to showcase the seriousness
6:50
with which we took those commitments and how we actually deliver them.
6:54
And then I think there were other New Yorkers for whom they told me,
6:59
they just don't know.
6:59
even if we accomplish these things, will they be able to stay in the city.
7:03
And having to build out an agenda that speaks
7:06
to the specificity of their concerns, the universal approach at large.
7:10
And then I had New Yorkers who came and shared with me.
7:13
You know, one New Yorker spoke to me
7:15
about how their number one concern was about casinos,
7:19
you know, and I shared with them that that I myself am skeptical,
7:23
of the economic development promises that come with casinos.
7:26
And I also know that there's a referendum that was passed by voters
7:29
that creates the citation of three casinos within the New York City.
7:32
And I can't actually change that myself.
7:36
And the frustration of knowing that this is something
7:40
that a person does not want and you cannot help them.
7:42
And that's also part of what it looks like, is to be honest with people,
7:44
even when that honesty isn't what they want to hear from you, you.
7:48
But part of the reason why so many people are disengaged
7:51
with our politics is
7:54
there is a lack of honesty within the way in which we talk about it,
7:57
and when the way in which we even explain it.
8:00
A couple more questions on the transition before looking ahead.
8:02
I know that you have been a legislator, but not an executive, and back
8:05
when I was doing that profile over the summer,
8:07
I know that you were talking to people
8:08
about what leadership means about how to grow as an executive.
8:12
I wanted to hear, can you share any of that advice with us?
8:15
And how did you how did you what steps did you take to close
8:19
the gap to feel prepared for stepping into this moment?
8:22
And do you? You know, I think the the key thing
8:25
that I was told again and again is the importance of the team around you.
8:28
And frankly, that's been one of the things that's been most exciting
8:31
about the transition is that every time
8:36
you announce a new member of the team,
8:39
it's not like an endorsement in the campaign, where it's
8:42
kind of this momentary rise, and then you're seemingly back into place.
8:46
This is genuinely an
8:49
an incredible addition of capacity in your ability to fulfill the agenda.
8:53
And each time we've made an announcement, each time I feel like our team
8:56
is getting more and more prepared, more and more ready for this.
8:59
And I think the other part of the advice that I've received beyond
9:02
who you surround yourself with, is that you actually listen to people,
9:07
that you actually bring New Yorkers along with you, because our campaign
9:11
was not just about reaching out to those who haven't voted in a long time,
9:16
it was also reaching out to those who haven't voted at all.
9:19
And that's an opportunity to show people
9:22
that political engagement has to extend beyond the ballot box.
9:27
It is not just one moment in one year that you come back to every four years.
9:32
It is something that requires a participation and engagement.
9:36
And in the same way that New Yorkers won this election, not me,
9:40
New Yorkers will win this agenda, not just me.
9:42
I know that you, previously had said that you wanted a team
9:45
that did not have policy litmus test, that you wanted
9:48
folks with differing opinions,
9:49
has that transition team, has the staff you put in place lived up to that?
9:52
Absolutely.
9:53
I think you'll see that appointments are not simply a reflection of myself.
9:58
And I think there's a tendency sometimes to just look to reproduce yourself,
10:03
your ideas, your preferences, and each and every person you hire.
10:06
What you do if you're to do that is create the conditions
10:09
where everyone in the room is measured by the quickness
10:12
with which they can say "yes" to you and "yes" to any one of your ideas.
10:15
You need to build a team where people can also say
10:17
"no" to you, where people can push you, where you are able to have the debate
10:21
inside the room, as opposed to waiting to have the debate outside the room.
10:25
And I think that in the appointments we've made thus far,
10:28
it's not demanding alignment on each and every issue.
10:31
It's asking, do you believe in the agenda at hand, and do you believe,
10:35
do you have a vision for this specific position that shows you can fulfill that?
10:40
You know, at the same time, there's folks who have been frustrated with that
10:42
that thought that some of this coalition building, even among your agenda
10:46
or even among your appointments, has maybe betrayed the movement that got you here.
10:49
I'm thinking about the appointment of Jessica Tisch as police commissioner.
10:52
I'm thinking about a vocal, rejection of a Democratic challenger
10:57
to Hakeem Jeffries, in Brooklyn.
10:59
My question is, like as you've made some of these moves to the transition,
11:02
have you had to embrace a different side of yourself?
11:04
Do you hear any of the critiques that we're seeing of "insider Mamdani" these days?
11:08
You know, I think you have to first
11:11
and foremost take these critiques in good faith.
11:15
You, you as you win, as you win an election,
11:20
you can start to tell yourself stories that any critique is critique
11:23
you have to keep far away from you.
11:24
People don't understand.That.
11:25
That is how you become removed from the reason
11:28
you did this in the first place.
11:30
When you engage with it, you separate and from the good faith, from the bad faith.
11:34
And I think taking this at the good faith, I understand
11:37
the criticism that those have shared.
11:38
I also think that
11:41
it is important that it's not just a reproduction of self
11:44
in every single appointment,
11:45
and that we understand that, for example, with the NYPD,
11:50
my decision in retaining
11:52
Commissioner Tisch is a decision on the basis
11:56
of looking at her record of coming into an NYPD
12:00
that the Adams administration had stacked the upper echelons of with
12:04
corruption and incompetence, and starting to root that out while
12:07
lowering crime across the five boroughs, making this decision
12:11
not only in recognition of that, but also to fulfill the larger public
12:16
safety vision that we had laid out over the course of the campaign,
12:18
which focused on the creation of a Department of Community Safety
12:22
that will tackle the mental health crisis, the homelessness crisis.
12:25
This is also a decision that is not one that is in tension with the commitments
12:30
I've made specific to the NYPD,
12:32
like the disbanding of the Strategic Response Group.
12:35
Those things still happen. That still happens.
12:37
And I think that's what's important to make clear, to New Yorkers,
12:41
is that
12:42
the things that we campaigned on around the disbanding of the SRG,
12:45
the creation of the DCS, these are still things that we will fulfill.
12:48
We will do so with the teams that we're building around us.
12:51
One question
12:52
I had is like, there's so much national and international focus on both campaign
12:56
and I think your administration going for
12:58
that it's such a hyper local job, you know, how do you, how do you balance
13:02
what will be the intense attention with the reality of who you're serving?
13:09
I think you
13:12
you have to remember not just that reality, but
13:17
the point of this is to serve the city, right?
13:20
It's it's not like a reality check.
13:22
It's the reason why I did this.
13:23
It's the reason why it was possible to weather difficult moments.
13:27
Because it's all in service of a city that I love.
13:30
There's some days where it's hard to believe that my job
13:33
is traveling around New York City and meeting New Yorkers
13:36
and listening to their concerns to have the opportunity to act upon them.
13:39
And I also think the greatest thing you can do is the power of example
13:43
of what you can do, what you can succeed, what you can deliver.
13:47
And that's an example that you can allow people across
13:51
the country, across the world to use to relate in their own lives.
13:54
It's an example, however, that comes for the delivery for New Yorkers,
13:58
because what we're talking about right now,
14:02
the growing
14:04
sense amongst New Yorkers that politics is irrelevant
14:07
to their day to day struggles, the inability
14:11
for our political system to deliver on crises large and small.
14:16
These are not uniquely New York issues.
14:18
These are issues that people feel outside of the city, outside of this country,
14:23
and we have an opportunity
14:26
to show that by serving New Yorkers, we can also showcase
14:29
a politics that can serve working people, wherever they may be.
14:33
I want to look ahead.
14:34
You know, you, how would you define the priorities for your agenda?
14:37
What would you define as success or failure for the Mamdani administration?
14:41
It comes back to affordability.
14:43
The priorities have to be the fulfillment.
14:45
Are those are the three part.
14:46
Are we talking about busses, childcare, whether my... Come on, hit 'em! Busses, childcare,
14:50
Rent freeze. Come on.
14:51
Boom. But what about like things like, public,
14:54
the publicly subsidized grocery stores?
14:55
Is that priority too? That is a priority.
14:58
So it's all of the above.
14:59
When we think about the campaign promises. I would say that
15:01
the the first order of priorities, like ranking best friends,
15:04
the first order of priority are the three that we built the campaign around.
15:08
Okay.
15:08
There are obviously other commitments we made in addition to that, commitments
15:11
that I've shared with you in this conversation.
15:13
You know, five city owned grocery stores, one in each borough.
15:18
The fulfillment of these things
15:20
are not just critically important because you're fulfilling what, animated
15:23
so many to engage with the campaign, to support the campaign, but
15:26
also because of the impact it can have on a New Yorker's life.
15:29
There's a lot of politics where it feels like it's a contest around narrative,
15:33
that when you win something, it's just for the story
15:35
that you can tell of what you won.
15:37
But so many working people can't feel that victory in their lives.
15:41
The point of a rent freeze is you feel it every first of the month.
15:44
The point of a fast and free bus is you feel it every day
15:47
when you're waiting for a bus that sometimes never comes.
15:50
The point of universal childcare is so that you don't have to pay $22,500
15:55
a year for a single toddler.
15:57
These are not things I have to explain the worth of to you, or an intellectual victory.
16:02
It is a material one.
16:03
And so to me, when we talk about the struggles of our democracy,
16:08
when we talk about a withering faith in it as a political system,
16:11
we have to understand that the withering of that faith is intensely
16:15
connected to the inability of that system to deliver on the needs of the people.
16:19
So success is the big three promises.
16:21
Success is the big three.
16:23
What about political goals?
16:24
I mean, I was really on cable news today,
16:26
and they're talking about the "Mamdani wing of the Democratic Party,"
16:29
and they're talking about, you know, challengers facing incumbents
16:33
and the goal of spreading kind of progressivism,
16:35
I think specifically socialism across the country.
16:37
Is that a goal you share?
16:38
Like, is that
16:39
do you look out at those challenges and say, that is the "Mamdani wing?"
16:42
I think that anyone fighting for working people and fighting for a politics
16:47
that doesn't just think of working people, but puts them at the heart of what it is
16:52
that we're doing, is critically important anywhere in this country.
16:55
I think that for me, it is,
16:59
this is a moment
17:00
in time where we have to reckon with
17:04
why people feel this way about politics, and there is oftentimes an inability
17:09
to reckon with the failures that have come before us,
17:11
because they implicate a lot of what we're doing right now.
17:13
But the implication is that part of your political project
17:16
is to spread across the country and to Congress.
17:19
Is that true?
17:20
The part
17:21
I mean, part of my political project is to spread the fight for working people
17:25
everywhere.
17:25
And I think that can mean new candidates.
17:29
It can also mean a renewed belief amongst those who are already there to fight.
17:33
You know,
17:34
one of the things I also wanted to ask is like,
17:35
it feels like core to the kind of Democratic Party's, questions
17:38
of moving forward has been to what to take from your campaign.
17:42
I have heard people say everything from "it's all about
17:45
social media" to, kind of "separate from the substance."
17:48
I actually want to read you a quote. Hit me. And have you respond.
17:51
Is this mean tweets or good tweets?
17:52
No, no, no, not tweets at all.
17:53
People who just said "I think my party wants to learn lessons from,
17:56
Mamdani success that are portable to a place like Michigan where I live.
18:00
It's less about ideology and more about the message discipline
18:03
on focusing what people care about.
18:04
It's about the tactical wisdom of getting out there
18:06
and talking to everybody."
18:08
I'm wanting to know, do you think this is true?
18:10
Like when we get outside of New York, how, you know, are we thinking that it's less
18:14
about substance of campaign than tactics, or can we separate those things?
18:18
I don't think you can fully separate the medium and the message.
18:22
I think that
18:24
that person is correct, that you have to have a politics
18:28
that relates to working people's lives and their struggles.
18:31
It can't be one that needs to be translated.
18:33
I would also say that yes, there are far more New Yorkers
18:37
who do not ask me about how I describe my politics and more.
18:40
They ask me, "do I fit in that politics?"
18:43
I also think, however, that if if all we did was make videos
18:48
without a vision,
18:49
an affirmative vision of how working class New Yorkers could afford the city,
18:53
then I wouldn't be seated across from you right now,
18:56
and that's, there are aspects
18:59
of this campaign that are very much focused on New York City, right?
19:03
I don't know if there's a rent guidelines board anywhere else
19:05
in this country that can freeze the rent for more than 2 million tenants.
19:08
We do have the slowest busses in the country.
19:11
We do have childcare at costs that are astronomical,
19:14
but the struggle for working people to afford day to day life, to afford
19:18
dignity in in the city they call home, that's not New York City specific.
19:22
And what I would say is, wherever anyone is, to ask the people around them,
19:28
what is the example of that struggle in your life and what are the tools?
19:32
And then for you as the candidate to think about
19:34
what are the tools
19:34
that government has to intervene in that, to actually provide relief to that?
19:38
Because so often politics feels like an exercise
19:43
in language and ideas that you need
19:46
to have been at the last meeting to understand this meeting,
19:49
and you actually need to meet people wherever they are,
19:53
and not explain to them
19:54
why they should listen to you, but to actually have a vision
19:58
that is intuitive for the struggles that they're living through. Come into May.
20:02
what's more likely, Arsenal Premier League title or you're
20:06
still at plus 15 favorability?
20:11
Look at my man.
20:12
You know... Trying hit things against each other.
20:14
Honestly, I'm so new to this whole, like, favorability as...
20:20
Yeah, that's fair.
20:21
So I don't I don't think about the favorability, all that much.
20:26
I do think
20:29
Arsenal are going to win the league this year,
20:31
and I also think it's not going to come at the expense of the affordability agenda.
20:34
I think we can pursue these things at the same time.
20:36
You asked me about the "Mamdani wing,"
20:38
I was gonna say the "Bukayo Saka wing" of the party.
20:41
Certainly, rather than anything Tottenham...
20:43
I appreciate your time.
20:44
And, thank you for for making time for us.
20:47
You were very welcome. Was a pleasure to be here.
21:01
I.
