Zohran Mamdani

Here, at City Hall, as I sit behind George Washington's desk, I cannot see all of America. But like so many who came before, I can see New York City.

It is precisely because we love this nation that we will not leave it.

America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes.

You each hold a special power, the power to determine what America means.

The frontier may be closed, we may have walked on the moon, but the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, that work endures, and it belongs to us all.

What power each of us holds to bring America ever closer to the greatness so many have seen when they looked upon these shores.

We see a nation whose immense wealth has been built by those with calloused, dirt-streaked hands, those who toil on factory floors and chisel into stone.

We see the wealthiest country in the history of the world, one where children go to sleep hungry while the world's first trillionaire hungers for more.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani urged New Yorkers in a social media post this week to set their air conditioners at 78 degrees Fahrenheit to alleviate pressure on the power grid.

Patriotism has never been about pretending our nation is without flaws. Patriotism is every act of righteous dissent.

Those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power and enrich themselves by turning us against one another. Division is the oldest trick in politics and the cheapest.

The powerful have always known their answer. America, in their view, is an arena of supremacy where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal.

Hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants arrived with stomachs aching from a famine manufactured by imperial cruelty.

We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else.

At every moment in our past, those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power and enrich themselves by turning us against one another. Division is the oldest trick in politics, and the cheapest.

The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional, because here nothing is fixed into place.

We are fully prepared, there isn't anything to share beyond that.

But patriotism has never been about pretending our nation is without flaws.

And yet today, too many of our leaders do not believe in a vision of this nation as an asylum for the persecuted, but rather as one that persecutes those seeking asylum.

Division is the oldest trick in politics, and the cheapest.

American exceptionalism, the conventional wisdom tells us, makes our freedom a little more free.

That legacy of every generation of Americans insisting that the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is no relic of the past.

Our City is doing its part too: maintaining the 78 degrees rule in our buildings, dimming/turning off our lights during peak electricity demand, asking private partners to do the same, and powering down non-essential equipment.

What’s a party if not its voters?

And we have many more to win.