Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani refused to denounce a resolution by his comrades at the Democratic Socialists of America’s to boot members who were not strongly anti-Zionist.
Mamdani tiptoed around the hateful resolution at the Labor Day Parade along Fifth Avenue, where he marched alongside Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont).
“My reaction is that the platform, that I am running on, the one that I want to be held accountable to by New Yorkers is the one that is on my website. It’s the one that I’ve been running on since the beginning of this campaign and that the only orders I will be taking are the ones from New Yorkers themselves as we seek to make this a city that all 8 and a half million can afford,” Mamdani said.
The DSA last month adopted“For a Fighting Anti-Zionist DSA” resolution, warning members that they could face expulsion if they oppose the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel or work with lobbyists affiliated with pro-Israel groups, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Ahead of the march, the politician slammed President Trump for offering Mayor Adams a job in the White House — a proposal Adams shot down, vowing to continue his re-election bid.
The offer was a “distraction” from what the candidates are offering the people of New York, he continued.
“I am just as confident as I was of winning this race, I am just as outraged as I was about Donald Trump’s attempts to intervene in this race. The focus, however, has to continue to be the struggles of working New Yorkers,” said Mamdani.
“We’ve seen that Donald Trump views the law as a suggestion. He believes that it’s something that he’s above, and what he’s showing is that he’s willing to utilize any tool, whether those real or imagined, to try and shape this race. I would have no issue with candidates dropping out of their own volition. We’ve seen that before,” he continued.
“The issue here is that all of this is working backwards from President Trump’s desire to try and heighten the odds of any candidate to defeat me, and we are confident that no matter what formulation of this race takes, whether it’s me versus three candidates or me one-on-one with any one of them, we will win the race. But what we cannot stand is the affront to democracy and the idea that it is a president who could pick the next mayor of the city and not the people of that same city.”
Still the Queens assemblyman said he would be willing to work with the president should he be elected mayor.
“[A relationship] would be one where I would be willing to work with him if it was to the benefit of New Yorkers, if Donald Trump wanted to follow through on his promise to actually make grocery prices lower as he had spent much of his presidential campaign speaking about, if he wanted to follow through on making it easier to afford a cost of living in the city and across this country,” said Mamdani.
“But if it comes to the expense of New Yorkers, I would fight them each and every step of the way.”