Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani delivered an impassioned victory speech Tuesday night, calling his win a triumph for working people across New York City. At 34, Mamdani will become the city’s first socialist, first Muslim, and first South Asian mayor — a groundbreaking moment that filled Brooklyn’s Paramount Theatre with celebration and hope.

Born in Uganda and raised on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, Mamdani began by thanking immigrant families and working-class New Yorkers for fueling his campaign. Addressing Islamophobic attacks he faced, he said the result proved that “fear cannot overcome the collective courage of a city that chooses dignity over division.”

Quoting Eugene Debs and Jawaharlal Nehru, he described his victory as part of a larger moral awakening — a call to “step out from the old to the new” and build a fairer society through collective action.

Turning to his supporters, Mamdani paid tribute to “hands calloused from bike handlebars, bruised from warehouse floors, marked by kitchen burns,” saying those same hands had now helped seize political power for ordinary New Yorkers.

He emphasized that his campaign’s spirit must continue into governing — with transparency, accountability, and a people-first approach. His tone mixed gratitude with determination, setting expectations for the hard work ahead.

Mamdani restated his core promises: rent freezes for regulated housing, free citywide bus service, universal child care, and a new Department of Community Safety to handle mental health crises without relying on police.

Borrowing Mario Cuomo’s phrase, he said, “You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose,” vowing that his administration’s “prose” would be practical, measurable, and rooted in public needs.

“In a moment many describe as politically dark,” Mamdani concluded, “New York has chosen to be a light — not by wishing for change, but by participating in it. This power belongs to you.”