Mamdani: 'America is exceptional because here nothing is fixed into place'
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani spoke at City Hall surrounded by newly naturalized citizens to mark the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Credit: Anna Connors/Pool The New York Times via AP
Seated at George Washington's desk at City Hall, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Friday delivered a speech in which he marked the nation's 250th anniversary and defended immigrants' significant role in founding America.
In a 13-minute address, Mamdani decried wealthy and powerful forces who've insisted the nation's earliest new immigrants "were anything but exceptional."
Mamdani, surrounded by 10 immigrants who recently became naturalized citizens, sharply criticized "oligarchs who buy elections" and a "health insurance industry that exploits the sick." He condemned masked U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents for "terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans."
The speech made no mention of President Donald Trump, whose administration has implemented mass deportations as part of a crackdown on those living in the country without legal authorization.
The mayor's speech appeared to draw parallels between the challenging paths immigrants faced after landing on the shores of America 250 years ago to those arriving today.
"For generation after generation, we have been told that when the world has sent its people to our shores, it has not sent its best," the mayor said. "It sent Puritans and Sikhs and Quakers and Muslims and Jewish people who were banished for praying the wrong way, worshiping the wrong Gods, angering the wrong people. It sent peasants and serfs from slums and shtetls who were treated as less because they hardly owned clothes, let alone land."
But Mamdani, who was born in Kampala, Uganda, argued America's exceptionalism comes not from its wealth, power or military strength.
"America is exceptional because here nothing is fixed into place," he said. "The frontier may be closed, we may have walked on the moon, but the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, that work endures, and it belongs to us all."
Trump is scheduled to speak from Mount Rushmore in South Dakota on Friday at approximately 7:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
Robert Brodsky is a breaking news reporter who has worked at Newsday since 2011. He is a Queens College and American University alum.
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