'A leader who will fight for us'

Ralph Palladino is a former vice president of AFSME District Council 37 Clerical-Administrative Employees Local 1549. He worked at Bellevue Hospital for 40 years. 

Democratic Socialist Zorhan Mamdani’s decisive win over former Governor Andrew Cuomo in June’s Democratic Party primary has the billionaire class, large corporate real estate owners and the many in the moderate Democratic establishment freaking out. 

They call him “dangerous” and they attack him for being a socialist and a communist. He is being red-baited by the other mayoral candidates in the same manner as was done to so many by the discredited Senator Joe McCarthy in the 1950s and as President Trump is doing now.

He leads in the polls despite these attacks. The numbers that came out to vote for a young socialist for mayor were a record for any candidate in a primary in the city’s history. Latest polling shows that over 90 percent of Mamdani’s likely voters are “highly motivated” to vote for him. Polling also shows higher negative ratings for the other candidates in both parties.

He won the nomination because in part voters want to replace those politicians who constantly break promises to the people who elected them. His policy platform includes free public transportation, freezing rents for rent-regulated apartments, affordable housing, investing in NYCHA, expansion of low-cost and publicly run food stores, expanding universal childcare and raising wages for childcare and early childhood education professionals. 

He wants to strengthen our public health system, including fighting for universal healthcare while ending disparities in health in poorer neighborhoods. He is a strong supporter of environmental justice. These are some of the “dangerous things” his opponents say that he would institute and fight for. They claim what he says he would do is just “pie in the sky” empty promises.

In Western Europe, Social Democrats have secured free education, including college education, free and low-cost healthcare for all, and both low cost and some free childcare. Workers get four weeks’ paid time off and earn enough to go away on vacation. All these things were won for working people without Europe losing its billionaires and corporations.

The socialist brand is not un-American. There has been a socialist current in American politics since 1901 when the Socialist Party was formed and the country was less populated. They had 13,000 members for a decade or so and got 900,000 votes in two elections up to 1920. Eugene Debs ran for President. Prior to 1920 they had 33O local socialists elected officials in towns and cities all over the United States.

Their Socialist Party program supported workers’ rights and women’s suffrage. Eventually, women’s right to vote and workers’ rights became laws. Workers’ rights were won thanks to the organizing in the 1930s by various left-wing parties helping to build unions, leading mass demonstrations of unemployed and workers pressuring and working with President Franklin Roosevelt to institute the New Deal. The right to organize, unemployment insurance and public works programs became law. “Dangerous” stuff? Not to workers, the unemployed and professionals, among others. These things were won despite opposition from the rich and powerful.

Politicians like New York Republicans Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and Congressman Vito Marcantonio fought for and won the “dangerous ideas” of public housing, workers’ rights, civil-service rights for public employees, public sanitation and free college education. They instituted higher taxes on the very rich to pay for it. By the 1950s and the Eisenhower Administration the tax on millionaires was 91 percent. The rich did not go broke, and they did not leave the country.

Mamadani’s plans, in part, can be paid for by increasing taxes on billionaires and corporations. The state must approve his income taxation plan. Polling from various sources say that the public supports fair taxation. State legislative leaders Carl Heastie and Andrea Stewart-Cousins, both of who have endorsed him, said they can get such a tax passed. Mayor Mamdani would have the mandate and bully pulpit to fight for this. It is easier to win since it would be a city tax and not instituted statewide. This is especially true since the governor needs the city voters to win re-election.

His commonsense proposals, supported by a majority of New Yorkers, are worth fighting for. He is the only candidate who has not been tarred by scandal, and the only one who has said he would stand up to President Trump. We need a leader who will fight for us working people and stand up to the president’s bullying. Zohran Mamdani is the one!