Emergent Mamdani

New York City is at a crossroads.  Zohran Mamdani has a unique opportunity to heal community rifts and make progress towards arresting ideological polarization. 

Is he driven to try? Is he up to the challenge?  If so, it will be character-defining and propel him to national leadership stature. 

If done with unmistakable good faith, it may disarm his critics, even if it doesn't silence them.  A fringe of hard-core ideologues may be skeptical or even confounded at first, but they will come on board.

As his term begins, he will keep us all guessing, which is sound strategy. His tone will soften before the cement of his substance hardens.  

Belief in human dignity and freedom has ecumenical appeal, and the sincerity of Mandani's professed spirit should be beyond question or reproach, if he earns it.

The formula demands a delicate balance of intellectual flexibility, pragmatism, political acumen and complexity of internal emotional makeup. He can reconcile bitter enmities, but only if he wants to.  

History has shown that a person or nation considered least capable or desirous of pursuing improved relations between warring factions, may ironically turn out to be the only one for the job:  President Nixon with China, Menachem Begin with Egypt, General MacArthur with Japan.

Mamdani has moderated his initially inflammatory tone, and to his credit he has done so without swallowing his pride or retreating from his core positions.  Nonetheless, some of them require fine tuning.

We don't know exactly what he's thinking. That portends promise. 

Becoming a "cause celebre" in the future, sometimes demands having being an "agent provocateur" in the past.

Mamdani must dismount a few hobbyhorses: arresting the head of state of Israel, alone among nations, but not those of Iran, China, South Africa, et al; dissolving critical police emergency response teams; transferring disciplinary authority of police officers to inexpert civilian complaint review boards often appointed despite, or because of their one-sided inclinations; "reforming" property tax rates for homeowners; expanding and tightening rights and protections of criminals over their victims; sacrificing an essential revenue source by making public transportation free and de facto mobile homeless shelters, etc.

Mamdani has already done us a service by telling us what we don't want to hear, such as the futility of "homeless sweeps" that don't lead to permanent lodging. He must realize, however, that the government must supersede the free will of any person who insists on staying outside during extreme winter weather. 

The new mayor should, at a minimum, recuse himself from disputes surrounding existing statues, such as those honoring George Floyd and Christopher Columbus. And he must leave in place his predecessor's prohibition against the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement that targets Israel, and none other among the more than 200 other nations on earth, including candidates such as Uganda, Turkey and Mexico.

He must enforce zero-tolerance of pogroms at colleges and houses of worship.  Jews are the victims of hate crimes more than all other minority groups in this most diverse of cities combined, and commensurate resources must be directed to suppress and punish it. 

In the 1930s, there were anti-Jewish marches in Manhattan, and Madison Square Garden was packed with 20,000 members of a Nazi-sympathizing German organization that held rallies nationwide.  Meyer Lansky, a major organized crime figure, and a few of his acquaintances took direct action that under no circumstances should be countenanced or repeated.   

But the bullies backed off.

Never should vigilantes or goon squads take matters into their own hands, whether proactive or reactive.  But if pushed too far, with their backs against a wall, it's human nature to defend oneself. That, of course, is the bailiwick of the NYPD to preempt, with federal intervention, if necessary. No aggrieved group should take matters into their own hands.

Mamdani was harshly criticized last month for a video in which he clearly explained the rights that New Yorkers have in the event they are apprehended or otherwise interrogated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).  His presentation was informational with an overtone of advocacy.  That's fine.  He clarified rights and responsibilities, exactly as attorneys do when they advise their clients.

He was further lambasted for appointing a felon, who was convicted of armed robbery many years ago, as a "justice advisor" on his transition team's "criminal legal system" committee. Was this a bad joke, or perhaps a masterstroke?

Not so fast: this doesn't mean New York will turn into Bizarro World. 

Recovering alcoholics and narcotics addicts can be the most insightful, credible, highly motivated and inspiring counselors for people who presently feel, as they once did themselves, locked indefinitely in a joyless and unproductive existence.   Substance abuse treatment centers will attest to that.  And students who were once classroom hellraisers, sometimes undergo transformative experiences in life, and become educators who are role models to what used to be called delinquent kids.

Someone who has struggled on the street and been buffeted by the "school of hard knocks" is  generally more sympathetic, plausible and effective than a person whose main selling point is a credit-laden college transcript.

"RAP sheets" are sometimes little or nothing more than memorialized snap judgements.

Still, we may have to borrow some extra hands so that we have enough fingers to keep crossed. The New York Post identified several additional transition team members who appear to share a common antipathy for the police.

Mistrust but verify.

That should be the public's "due diligence," not just regarding Mayor Mamdani's nonconformist selections, but also the more mainstream trusted advisors of other leaders in public and private life, whose choices may sport more conventional "gravitas," but whose double lives belie their assumed trustworthiness. 

We often hear of "pillars of the community" who look and play the part but turn out to be lowlifes and hypocrites.  They can be members of Congress, Eagle Scout mentors or megachurch pulpiteers.

Models of rectitude sometimes do strange things: like abandoning their posts as masters of the household and boardroom or as "family values" mavens who turn out to be serial adulterers,  perhaps faking their own deaths to hook up with an ingenue in Bali.  

Mamdani's confidantes and appointees may seem like society's outliers, but they may they prove to be the real deals that New York needs. 

Let's neither idealize nor demonize Mamdani. Give him a chance to put New York's house in order.  It can use some upward mobility, as he did for his own edifice, being a wealthy man who having clung to his rent-stabilized apartment in Astoria, is "moving' on up" to Gracie Mansion.

Next Sept. 11 will be the 25th anniversary of the World Trade Center terrorist murders. 

As mayor, he will of course be prominent in the solemn commemoration. Predictably, he will be the focus of a lot of attention.  Some of it will be malicious and bigoted.  We cannot look into his or anybody else's heart. 

But this is certain: Zohran Mamdani will be profoundly moved by the poignancy of the occasion no less than all other New Yorkers and people of good-will.