Flanked by a group of naturalized citizens and seated at George Washington’s own desk, NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani used the moment to make a forceful case for the country’s history as a nation of immigrants, timed just ahead of the 250th anniversary festivities. The roughly quarter-hour address, delivered July 3, wove in personal biography alongside a more extensive look at America’s long tradition of welcoming newcomers from around the globe.
Mamdani drew a sharp contrast: extreme wealth concentration alongside child hunger, and ICE-style enforcement actions described in visceral terms — masked agents making arrests after being served food by the very undocumented workers they’re detaining.
“As we mark 250 years, what do we see?” he began before making Republican heads explode. ‘We see a city of contradictions within a nation of contradictions. We see the wealthiest country in the history of the world, one where children go to sleep hungry while the world’s first trillionaire hungers for more.”
“We see monopolies that dominate every industry and oligarchs who buy elections,” he continued. “We see masked agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans. We see a nation whose immense wealth has been built by those with calloused, dirt-streaked hands, those who toil on factory floors and chisel into stone.”
“And we see a nation that has allowed so much of that wealth to be held instead in the soft hands of a precious few,” he said. “Yes, we see America in a health insurance industry that exploits the sick, but that is not all we see when we look for America. We see it, too, in the nurse who works a double shift and then stops on her way home to check on an ailing neighbor.”
“Yes, we see America in corporate landlords for whom negligence is a business model,” he continued. “We see it, too, in the father who tucks his children into bed beneath a ceiling stained with leaks, who wakes before dawn to go to work and still believes his country can do better by his family. Yes, we see America when we spend our tax dollars on bombs and bailouts, when we sell our elections for the highest bidder. Yet we see it just as clearly in every American who still believes this country belongs to we, the people.”
“We see America each time neighbors link arms with neighbors without asking how long they have lived here or what papers they have, as ice invades our neighborhoods,” he continued. “We see America each time those young and old stand in the beating rain or the stifling heat to cast their ballots. We see America each time working people demand more, not just for themselves, but for their fellow Americans.”
“There are some who respond to those who ask for more from America with a simple refrain,” he said. “Love it or leave it, they say. But patriotism has never been about pretending our nation is without flaws. Patriotism is every act of righteous dissent.”
“It is every march led under the heavy sun,” he added. “It is every protest held a decade before its time. It is precisely because we love this nation that we will not leave it. After all, who loves America more than those who have sacrificed so much to make it free?”
Amen to all of that. America is celebrating its saddest birthday ever. It feels depressing as we watch the most corrupt president in history profit from the office he holds while every day Americans’ needs are cast aside. We can do better.
