Mamdani’s NYC Victory Mobilized People Often Forgotten in Politics. What Would That Look Like Here?

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 11 November 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In Zohran Mamdani’s victory speech after being elected New York City’s new mayor, he thanked those often forgotten by the politics of the city, the “Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas. Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses. Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties.” It got us thinking about the people who make up our Bay Area cities and whether they are represented by our politics. And we’ll hear from you: Who are the often overlooked people who you see as the heart of your city? Guests: Jane Kim, California chair, Working Families Party - former San Francisco Supervisor representing District 6 from 2011-2019 Adena Ishii, mayor, City of Berkeley Noelia Corzo, supervisor, San Mateo County Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:35.2	From KQED.
0:44.2	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Like much of the country last week, we were keeping a close eye on New York's mayor's race, pitting Zoran Mamdani, a 34-year-old former SoundCloud rapper and
0:50.7	state assemblyman against Andrew Cuomo, a former governor, as well as the son of a governor.
0:57.2	After Mom Downey won handily, taking every borough but Staten Island, he gave a fiery speech that called out to many different immigrant groups in New York.
1:06.5	Thank you to those so often forgotten by the politics of our city who made this movement
1:12.9	their own.
1:14.9	I speak of Yemeni bodega owners and Mexican abuelas.
1:22.1	Senegalese taxi drivers and Uzbek nurses.
1:31.2	Trinidadian line cooks and Ethiopian aunties.
1:37.6	And we thought, dang, there's probably only a few places on this earth where multiracial,
1:39.8	multi-ethnic culture is so braided together.
1:43.1	And one of them is here in the Bay Area.
1:46.4	Samoan health care workers and Persian printers,
1:53.0	East Africans and Brentwood and Armenian contractors, Filipino luggage handlers and Cambodian chefs, Taiwanese hardware store owners and Vietnamese academics, Panamanian outdoor educators,
1:59.6	and Salvador and coffee roasters, Afghan realtors,
	...

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