Former Gov. David Paterson said other candidates should back the strongest choice to challenge Mamdani. Matthew McDermott
Zohran Mamdani’s victory rattled NYC’s political elite. But to win Black voters and defeat the Democrat machine, he must reject Al Sharpton’s co-optation and align with radical Black organizers.
The Democrat Party establishment, zionist industrial complex, and the billionaire class, as well as New York based cartels representing real estate/developers and polluters all know the best weapon to use against Zohran Mamdani is the Black Misleadership class in concert with elements of the petit bourgeois. This is quite evident in the weeks that have passed since Mamdani secured the Democrat Party nomination for Mayor of New York City (NYC) by winning the primary and, in the process, vanquishing establishment Democrats like Andrew Cuomo and the machine that backed him with a $25 million Super PAC funded by billionaires including, but not limited to, Michael Bloomberg.
This week the Black Misleadership Class dispatched former New York governor, David Paterson, to act as its spokesman and make the case for a united front against Mamdani. Earlier this week, Paterson, who supported Cuomo during the primaries, appealed to members of the Democrat Party to defeat Zohran Mamdani due to his “lack of experience.” Paterson more recently suggested that Mamdani is an “antisemite,” who needs to apologize for past comments he’s made about a “global intifada,” and generally apologize to the people he’s “harmed.” This is curious coming from Paterson given that he endorsed Cuomo who many believe offered nothing more than meretricious apologies to women who were allegedly sexually harassed while he was governor and the families of victims of COVID-19 related deaths in nursing homes due to intentional derelictions of duty while Cuomo was governor.
That said, it’s clear that the Black Misleadership Class has been given its orders by their white capitalist masters, especially the zionist industrial complex, to paint Mamdani as a wild, political novice, out of touch, frivolous, and dangerous Islamic radical antisemite who will make life precarious for NYC’s Jewish population - the second largest outside the zionist ethnostate of Israel. The zionist industrial complex’s favorite House negro and a top recipient of AIPAC blood money, Hakeem Jeffries declared that Mamdani, will have to do more to convince NYC’s Jewish voters that he will stand against antisemitism based on the nominee’s past staments on the zionist ethnostate of Israel, which included his suggestion that he would have Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu arrested for war crimes as Mayor noting, “this is a city [where] are values are in line with international law.” Jeffries makes these specious claims despite the fact that Mamdani has received the endorsement of Jewish lawmakers such as Representative Jerrod Nadler (D-NY) and NYC Comptroller Brad Lander, as well as national organizations including Jewish for Voice for Peace Action and Bend the Arc (albeit a tacit endorsement),
While Mamadani appears to be adroitly navigating the false claims of antisemitism against him, it’s still not clear if he’s prepared or best positioned to navigate a favorite tactic of the Black Misleadership Class, pigmentation politics. This is key due to Mamdani’s performance with Black voters during the primaries - according to exit polls, Cuomo, in precincts where at least 70 percent of the residents are Black, defeated Mamdani 59% to 26%. Additionally, Cuomo won 51% of all precincts with majority Black residents. Equally troubling for the Mamdani campaign is the fact that Cuomo won 49% of precincts with a majority of low-income residents compared to 38% for Mamdani. The outcome of the primaries continues a trend from a Marist poll from May that revealed 50% and and 47% of Black and households with an income less than $50,000, respectively, planned to vote for Cuomo versus 11% and 8% for Mamdani.
These numbers will undoubtedly be utilized by the coalition, currently in the process of forming, in an attempt to prevent Mamdani from becoming the Mayor of New York City. I spoke with the venerable Charles Barron, a veteran of both New York City and State politics [Barron served both as a member of the New York State Assembly and New York City Council, collectively, for nearly two decades], about the results of the primaries and Mamdani’s performance with Black and low-income New Yorkers. Barron noted that Mamdani’s win “rocked the Democratic Party establishment citywide, statewide, and nationally.” However, when I inquired how a candidate who ran and won on a bold and, seemingly, unapologetic platform that should benefit poor and working class people - including a rent freeze, free and fast buses, and universal child care - still lost the Black and working class vote, Barron lifted up two critical variables; the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and gentrification.
DSA would likely agree that the successful election of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) represents their most renowned and celebrated electoral victory to date. But DSA may not necessarily agree on how AOC won her 2018 election. In a piece in The Intercept entitled, Data Suggests that Gentrifying Neighborhoods Powered Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Victory, authors Zaid Jilani and Ryan Grim reported that contrary to the narrative that AOC won because Latino and other non white voters propelled her over her then white, male opponent, she actually performed best in whiter, more gentrified precincts in Queens, NYC neighborhoods like Astoria, Sunnyside, and Jackson Heights. According to Mr. Barron, this trend continued for Mamdani, noting that he won in areas like New York’s 57th Assembly District, which includes the Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Prospect Heights, Crown Heights, and Bedford-Stuyvesant communities. As Mr. Barron explained, the district was 72% Black in 2006 when Hakeem Jeffries was its Assemblyman and Letitia James was its NYC Councilwoman. In 2025 the district is 32% Black and 38% white.
Gentrification will be a key issue moving forward as it will likely be espoused, albeit speciously, by the Black Misleadership class, as well as the anti-Zohran coalition, to create a wedge between Black and low-income and voters and Mamadani. And while DSA, which Mamdani is a member of, can certainly point to the progressive platform that just won the Democrat Party primary for NYC mayor, it must also contend with the fact that the vast majority of its members, by their own assertion, are white. It must also be stated that many of DSA’s white members live in rapidly gentrifying districts like Harlem and Bedford Stuyvesant. As Mr. Barron noted, Mamdani will need to address how issues like gentrification and other challenges associated with affordability specifically impact Black New Yorkers just as he’s made specific commitments to combatting antisemitism and making NYC a safe place for its Jewish population. Barron further indicated that DSA will have to overcome its propensity for class reductionism, an issue that he believes has afflicted the white left since his days as a member of the Black Panther Party.
In a discussion with Al Jazeera, Portia Allen-Kyle, executive director of the Black-led group, Color of Change, suggested that Mamdani must better understand the, “spectrum of viewpoints in the Black community,” as well as apply a combination of “authenticity and innovation” to better reach NYC’s Black voters. Applying authenticity, especially given the platform that Mamdani ran and won on, will require organizing and conferring with principled Black radical organizations and leaders in New York City, New York State, and across the nation. That’s why it’s flummoxing that Mamdani chose to meet and appear with Al Sharpton and his National Action Network soon after winning the primary. During the appearance, Sharpton praised Mamdani for his “courage” and willingness to speak to the Black community - as if he speaks for the entire Black community. Sharpton neglected to name the fact that he he applied the use of pigmentation politics just a week before the primary election when he suggested that Mamdani is not progressive because he did not rank former mayoral candidate and Speaker of the NYC City Council, Adrienne Adams, who is a Black woman, as his second choice.
Sharpton has not endorsed Mamdani and will, of course, not formally endorse him. He will use Mamdani’s meteoric rise to center and benefit himself just as he did with Senator Bernie Sanders in 2016 and 2020. If Sharpton is serious about his praise for Mamdani, why is he not working as hard to get more Black Democrats like Jeffries, Representatives Gregory Meeks and James Clyburn, and the so-called Congressional Black Caucus to endorse him as he is trying to force Cuomo to drop out of the race, to allow for a “two person race?” The answer is simple, Sharpton is more a leader of the Black Misleadership Class than he is a leader for poor and working class Black people, in addition to, like Hakeem Jeffries, being an AIPAC errand boy and mouthpiece for the zionist industrial complex. Mamdani and his team must realize that counter-revolutionaries like Sharpton may help him bridge gaps with the Democrat party establishment, but will not help him bridge gaps with an aggregate of Black people and poor and working class people writ large, which may cost him the election and a key opportunity to advance policies that improve material conditions and pry power from the capitalist class stranglehold in NYC and beyond.
As Mr. Barron noted, there have been too many examples of DSA-backed candidates making Faustian agreements with the Democrat establishment only to become compromised agents of U.S. empire-driven imperialism and neo-colonialism fully supported and facilitated by the Democrat party. In compounding this point, Mr. Barron stated, “I’d rather fight to get Zohran to respect us [as Black radicals] more and to not play us like so many Black members of the Democratic Party.” He added, “You can’t run to Sharpton and run away from Black radicals.”
Zorhan Mamdani has done something that is quite extraordinary and we cannot dismiss the organizing of DSA and other left-leaning groups in that process. That said, the issues that Mamdani won on are much bigger than he is - these issues must be addressed in such a way that they can be efficaciously implemented and primarily serve and center poor and working class people. At the same time, organizing around these issues requires an analysis and understanding of how the most oppressed groups, including Black New Yorkers, are specifically and disproportionately impacted by the material conditions that continue to make their lives less safe and their humanity less affirmed.
Author and thinker David Roediger reminds us, “we must stop drawing lines dividing class and race and start drawing lines connecting them.” The Black Misleadership Class and their pigmentation politics is the antithesis of this edict. If Mamdani has any chance of winning in the general election, he and his team should be conferring with principled, Black-led radical organizations like Barron’s Operation P.O.W.E.R and the political operation it’s created that has successfully contended with and defeated the Black Misleadership Class and Democrat party establishment for decades. To do otherwise and bend the knee to race peddlers like Sharpton risks blowing a major opportunity to assist with the edification and emancipation of Black and all poor and working class people in NYC. This would not only be a major setback for the city, but also, potentially, for the process of building and sustaining multiracial and multiethnic independent political organizations necessary to vanquish the duopoly.
No Compromise
No Retreat
Note: My full interview with Charles Barron can be accessed by clicking here.
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright is an international climate and environmental liberation advocate, a racial justice practitioner, and a writer and policy expert residing in the United States with his family and their mischievous cat, “Evil” Ernie. He is a proud and active member of the Black Alliance for Peace and the Movement for Black Lives. His radio program, “Full Spectrum with Anthony Rogers-Wright,” airs on the Mighty WPFW network every Tuesday at 6:00 PM EST.
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