This article was originally published in Common Dreams under Creative Commons 3.0 license. Read the original article. Contact: editor@commondreams.org

By Brad Reed

NEW YORK CITY Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Friday delivered a speech commemorating the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States of America that drew a sharp contrast with President Donald Trump’s vision for the country.

Speaking from New York City Hall, Mamdani recounted how his city had long served as a refuge for people from across the globe who came seeking a new life an opportunity.

It was these immigrants who ultimately shaped New York and made it into what it is today, said Mamdani—who is an immigrant and among the rising number of democratic socialists who have recently won at the ballot box.

The mayor then moved to the present day, where he took aim at the anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies emanating from Trump and his MAGA movement.

See also: ‘Everything Is for Sale’: Trump Exploits 250th Anniversary of US Independence for Yet Another Grift

“The story of America has been written by those who have so often been told by those with power and influence and wealth that they were anything but exceptional,” Mamdani said. “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.”

Mamdani took aim at the ideology espoused by many rich and powerful people who see America as “an arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal.”

“America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes,” the mayor continued. “America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin. The rest of us, they insist, should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit.”

“How small they are,” Mamdani remarked. “How weak, how unoriginal. At every moment in our past, those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power for themselves by turning us against one another.”

The mayor then pivoted to a more hopeful tone by arguing that “time and again, including 250 years ago, those forces of division have been vanquished by the forces of progress.”

See also: ‘I Don’t F*ck With Trump’: Artists Listed for US 250th Anniversary Celebration Drop Out

Mamdani insisted that the greed shown by American oligarchs and the division sown by its current political leadership are “not all we see when we look for America.”

“We see it too in the nurse who works a double shift and then stops on her way home to check on her ailing neighbor,” he said. “Yes, we see in America corporate landlords for whom negligence is a business model. We see it too in the father who tucks his children into bed in a ceiling stained with leaks, who wakes before dawn to go to work, and who still believes this country can do better by his family.”

In his conclusion, Mamdani paid tribute to “those ideals upon which our nation was built,” which he described as “strong enough to endure any authoritarian regime, but only if we reach for them.”

“Ours is a nation working each day towards the perfection in which it was conceived,” he said. “A nation striving each day to better itself. Therein lies the work of America: The striving, the bettering, the reaching towards perfection. What a privilege each of us has to live in a nation that every one of its inhabitants can shape.”

[AV]

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