Mayor Mamdani and the Beloved Community

The power of a speech to inspire the best in us

Heather Khalifa/AP

Zohran Mamdani was inaugurated as mayor of New York City on New Year’s Day and his inaugural address inspires me because of the ways it reminds me of the Beloved Community. Dr. King popularized this concept in the mid 20th century with his prophetic vision that, “all people can share in the wealth of the earth.” And when we get past all of the noise that justifies inequity, it really is tragically silly that with all of this abundance we cannot find a way to make sure that everyone’s needs are met.

Solidarity is about proximity. It is easy to add to the noise and virtue signal how much the suffering of others pains you. Even more, taking on the right cause at the right time can even prove to be lucrative if that is someone’s goal. But if we are to take the Beloved Community seriously, as it deserves, we must do life with those we represent. We must endeavor to have real life relationships with people and refuse to echo empire’s way of speaking on behalf of people we do not actually know. The work of making the world just requires putting skin in the game. How can we make justice a reality if all we aim to do is love from a distance?

I loved watching Bernie swear-in Zohran and appreciated Zohran saying, “Thank you to the man whose leadership I seek most to emulate.” My hope for Mayor Mamdani is that while he is inspired by Senator Sanders that he also learns from Bernie’s blind spots. I hope his administration embraces intersectionality and the causality of race on economics while embracing a heterogeneous class consciousness.

It was powerful hearing Zohran declare, “The only expectation I seek to reset is that of small expectations.” Oppression thrives on limiting imagination. It makes daily life so difficult that cynicism is respected as realism. It keeps us stuck. How do we propel ourselves in spite of the gravity of small ambition? How do we inspire others to join in this risky yet worthwhile endeavor? Change won’t come by playing it safe. Change won’t come by any of us being messianic. We need help! How do we inspire others to abandon small expectations and build this together? If we are to live into this just society that so many of strive and live for then we must never abandon our expansive imaginations. We must find a way to pair pragmatism with our new definitions of what is possible in a manner that encourages the formerly stifled to dream and co-create.

The beauty in this work is that it wakes all of us up from the zero-sum game that Empire thrives on. Scarcity is nothing more than greed’s distraction. The comeuppance that those in powerful social locations so often fear is not a goal of the Beloved Community. This work is far more interested in building coalition rather than furthering divides. We ambassadors in chains have been called to love folks who don’t even like us. To abandon “I told you so'“ opportunities for the opportunity to be gracious and hospitable.

This capacity is underwritten by love and recognizing that none of us have gotten anywhere by ourselves. As Malcolm X taught us, “Don't be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn't do what you do or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn't know what you know today.” When we consider this we can see ways in which to exercise patience in a loving way. Not passively or pretending that it is less important than it actually is. But exercising a gentle, firm patience that asserts priorities without crushing anyone under its weight. A commitment to excellence in our pursuit of a just reality requires developing an allergy to mediocrity and an intolerance of substandard results. Mamdani speaks of replacing, “the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism,” and I believe we get there through understanding “something for everyone” as a baseline. We cannot tolerate the sort of inequity that allows people to starve or be unhoused. Our appetite for the Beloved Community must be robust enough to include everyone.

This is crucial because the work of the Beloved Community cannot be realized unilaterally. Mayor Mamdani speaks of the work ahead as, “a tale of eight and a half million cities, each of them a New Yorker with hopes and fears, each a universe, each of them woven together.” It is interdependence and awakening to the necessity of our neighbors that allows us to press further into this beloved reality. People often get so excited by charismatic leaders and I confess that I too am excited by the possibilities in this time. A hero ain’t nothing but a sandwich but we must glean inspiration from predecessors and the giants of our time. Those who remind us that we are not losing our minds just because we are convinced there’s a better way forward. Invoking the legacies of former mayors LaGuardia, Dinkins, and de Blasio in his speech charts a progressive path forward with plenty of game tape of what opposition and potential pitfalls lay ahead. But my excitement is coupled with the confidence of those who came before us and whose work and brilliance put us in position for this time as well as the opportunity to co-labour with folks from a broad array of social locations. We must embrace our differences as distinctions that provide strength to the through line of our common pursuit of justice and understand each victory not as culmination but as a foundation for the work ahead.