Zohran Mamdani’s victory is not just a historic victory for a new-generation immigrant youth. Not just a stunning victory for the son of a Muslim father and a Hindu mother who rose from nothing.
Behind this victory is the huge role of America’s socialists who have been working for many years, which the New York Times, CNN, Fox, Wall Street Journal, ABC-NBC-CBS will never talk about. I tried to make that point in my articles last few weeks in The Independent and Pressenza.
I have met many progressive activists over the past twenty-five years here in New York, which I consider a blessing in my ordinary life. Let’s take Leslie Cagan, who went from being a front-line face of the anti-Vietnam War movement to today being the face of this anti-genocide movement in Gaza — she’s at least eighty now: still has amazing organizational power! I walked down the street with her in anti-Iraq war marches.
People’s Climate March — 500,000 people marched down the streets of New York in 2014. I was with Leslie. She is like an elder sister who guided me. That’s exactly what Dr. Charlotte Phillips of the anti-war grassroots organization Brooklyn for Peace did, and still does with her organization. She and her husband Dr. Oliver Fein began their work with the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi back in the 1970s. Amazing history! Being friends with them is a blessing to common people like us.
My wife’s close friend, Nancy Romer — ten years older than us, but still with amazing energy and enthusiasm! Thousands of such people are working and organizing for peace, equality and justice throughout their lives here in America. The New York Times and their Zionist lying media will never talk about them, just the way they never talked about Noam Chomsky.
Today, I especially remember my mentor Chomsky, who repeatedly said in our interviews — Partha, don’t despair, don’t lose heart, because America is changing, changing fast. He said, looking at today’s America and seeing this Trump Clinton Cuomo Musk and their ilks, seeing the war, seeing the genocide in Palestine, you feel sad, you feel pain, but this America is not the America we have seen before. You can’t even imagine what it was like just fifty years ago.
Every word of my Guru is ringing in my ears today. He is the sage of truth. I bow to him in ultimate respect.
I also pay my deep tribute to Bernie Sanders, who shows us light.