BONUS: Z for Zohran

Hello, everybody.

It's Will here coming at you with a very special bonus episode.

Now,

longtime listeners of the show and longtime Will Meneker knowers

will be familiar with the fact that I have long been known, long been called by others, certainly not myself, Mr.

NYC.

Many people associate me with the NYC equals number one brand.

So it is my distinct pleasure today to introduce a mayoral candidate for this great city of New York who has come to kiss the ring and get the endorsement of Mr.

New York City.

Joining me today on the show is New York State Assemblyman Zoran Mamdani, who is running for mayor of New York City.

Zoran, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

I am indeed here and ready to kiss the ring.

All right, Zoran, this is probably the most important question that I will ask you in this interview.

And let's just do it at the top so we know where we stand here.

Zoran, is New York City indeed the greatest city in the world?

Absolutely no question about it.

Okay.

All right.

Got that out of the way.

I think we can pretty much wrap things up here.

Chris,

what do you think?

Is that good?

All right.

Okay.

All right.

This is the next one.

Please fill in the blank in this sentence.

New York City is the blank of America.

The best.

Good answer.

Good answer.

All right.

So, Zoran, I wanted to get into the state of the race and some of the big issues affecting just cities in America, but New York City in particular.

But first, between two real heads, between two real New Yorkers, let's alienate everyone listening, not from NYC.

Let's see and just go through some classic New York City stuff.

All right, okay, only real ones are listening now.

All right, so

yeah.

Well, they, hey, they can't vote.

We're trying to get all the votes of people in New York City two times.

Tammany Hall style.

All right.

All right.

So

this is a good one to start with.

What neighborhood did you grow up in?

Grew up in Morningside Heights.

Morningside Heights.

Okay.

What was your childhood train station?

My childhood train station was 116.

I would take, it was when I first moved to New York City, I was seven years old.

We moved to New York City because my dad got a job at Columbia.

And so that's why we lived in Morningside Heights.

And at that time, it was the one and the nine.

The nine, rest in peace.

You know, pour one out for the...

for the nine.

We hope for his return.

But then I would take the one in high school up to 231st street and that's where i would take the vx10 and you you went to bronx science right went to bronx science yes i'm one of those guys who couldn't get into stuyves and made it by hopefully

no i well i didn't i didn't even try uh i did prepare for the test though but uh some reason yeah um no no so so did you go to do you go to morningside park Does you play sports there?

Like I hang out in Morningside Park?

I would go to Riverside Park a lot.

I would also go to Morningside Park as well.

Yeah, I spent a lot of time at Riverside Park, Central Park when I was in middle school.

I used to be an avid soccer player at the non-competitive recreational league of the ASO, American Youth Soccer Organization.

All right, well, I mean, you're speaking my language here because I went to grade school in Morningside Heights at the Cathedral of St.

John the Divine.

You went to Cathedral?

I went to Cathedral, yes.

Oh my gosh.

And my childhood train station was 96th Street, 1923.

Let's go.

Wow, you went to cathedral.

Hungarian pastry shop?

Yeah, we're talking here?

Yeah.

All right.

This guy knows his stuff.

All right.

So now you are a state assemblyman currently for a story of Long Island City.

So, I mean, like, I'm going to assume you're a Met guy.

Are you Mets or Yankees?

I'm a light Met guy.

I said light because I really don't want to bullshit.

It originated out of a deep hatred of the Yankees.

And now it's become, you know, like a casual pastime of being a pro-Met guy, all the while knowing that at some point the owner of of the mets will likely spend a lot of money to defeat my ketchup

well you know he's he's got he's got enough he's got enough money for that that's for sure uh every time i saw a new player i'm like yes yes please put put it over there so who is your all-time who is your all-time favorite met my all-time favorite met

honestly just from like the the early days I feel like it's Piazza.

All right.

Greatest hitting catcher of all time.

I don't know about it.

The nostalgia.

The nostalgia for the Halcyon days of the year 2000.

I thought the world was going to end.

Yeah, sorry.

All right.

So yeah, like growing up in Morningside Heights, like how would you describe, like, how would you describe like the city you grew up in versus the city today?

Like, did you have fond memories of growing up in New York City, or what was your favorite thing about growing up in Manhattan?

I think one of my favorite things is

just also how quickly you can grow up.

Like going to high school in New York City and seeing the five boroughs through those eyes is something that I feel like it just gives you a completely different vantage point of what New York City is and can be.

I mean I

was

somebody who a lot of my life revolved around what I did after school.

So soccer, cricket.

And because of being on those teams, I would go around Queens, the Bronx, Brooklyn for these games.

And that would really kind of expand my worldview than just living in Morningside Heights.

But, you know, shout outs to Tom's Diner.

Shout out to Samads.

Now,

this is the aspect of your bio that I wanted to address.

I mean, you handled the baseball question very ably, Zoran.

But in your bio, it says, you're a cricketer.

You play cricket.

And now you're telling me you play soccer.

I mean, obviously you know ball, but are you concerned that maybe what opposition opposition research is going to do with your association with two flagrantly un-American sports?

You know,

that is my least concern of opposition research.

I'm like, if we're getting down to my stats in the PSAL as a bronze line striker and that I only put eight goals away in my senior year, I would love to defend that record.

Well, I mean, I mean, you can just say that and people will get so fucking confused that I think their eyes will just glaze over.

So you're right.

Let's see if we can start the

rat fucking campaign against you based on cricket and cricket alone.

Yeah, let's go.

All right.

Now, I want to talk a little bit about

your background.

And because you, like me, despite being also a Mr.

New York City, a Mr.

of New York City, among us, some of the greatest New Yorkers of all time, neither of us were actually born in New York City.

Where were you?

I was born in Atlanta, Georgia.

Maybe the first few precious days of my life in Atlanta, despite living in New York City for the last 41 years of my life.

You were born somewhere a little bit different.

Could you talk about where you were born and what it was like moving to America when you were seven?

Yeah, I was born in Kampala, Uganda, a little bit further from ATL, though all due respect to Atlanta.

I moved to New York City when I was seven.

I actually moved to New York City from Cape Town.

because after I was about five, my dad got a job at the University of Cape Town as a professor.

So we lived there for about two years.

And I remember moving to New York City in 1999.

And I went to this very progressive middle school called Bank Street.

It's the kind of school, which I loved, where when you got your report.

It was arrival of Cathedral.

It was arrival of Cathedral.

That's why when you said you went to Cathedral, my first thing was like, we used to body you guys.

Not when I was there, buddy.

Not when I was there.

But at my middle school, it's like I got there and I remember asking, like, where's the detention?

And I remember the administration, like the administration were very concerned.

They called my parents.

They were like, is he all right?

Like, what happened to him?

And I had been coming from like this strict Catholic school in Cape Town.

So it was a very big shift.

But

I think that and also I just kept getting told that I spoke English really well.

And I was like, what did y'all think?

The British colonized half the world.

What were the circumstances that led to you and your parents moving to New York City?

My dad got a job at Columbia.

And so that's what brought us over in 99.

Both of my parents had also gotten scholarships from different countries.

My dad's family is from East Africa,

you know, came over from India about 200 years ago.

My mom's family is from India, but they both got scholarships to come study in the U.S.

And so they were familiar with the U.S.

They'd worked in the U.S., lived in the U.S.

But in 99 specifically, it was that my dad got that job.

Do you think

your parents lives and personal histories are relevant to anything going on in the country right now yeah i would i would say so i mean i think you know my parents what enabled my parents to build the lives that they have have have built over many decades are things in many in in many respects that are in jeopardy right now i mean like my dad

In 1962, Uganda got its independence and the United States government gave the Ugandan government 23 scholarships as a gift for independence.

My dad won one of those scholarships.

That's why he, as a 16, 17-year-old, left Uganda to come study at the University of Pittsburgh.

And even just that whole idea of the United States having any relationship with the world

at any kind of a level is one that, you know, in the last few days has been playing out pretty prominently as Republicans attempt to dismantle much of that.

Now, you bring up your parents.

I got to ask you this.

Are your parents in real life as cool and impressive as their biographies would seem to suggest?

I mean, which one do you want to start with here?

Zoran, I was today years old when I realized that your mom is the incredibly accomplished filmmaker, Mira Nair, who directed the film Mississippi Masella, starring Denzel Washington, among other great films like Monsoon Wedding and others.

But like, I mean, like,

any chance you could get Denzel to maybe cut a maybe cut a little campaign ad for you, or does he usually stay out of politics?

I'm actually doing this show to get to him.

That's my plan here.

But I mean, they are incredible.

And I think it's rare that you find, you know, there's that whole phrase of never meet your heroes, but these are not only my heroes, but also my dear parents.

And that's been a pretty lucky experience for me growing up

to have them.

And just to set the record straight here, I am backed by big Mississippi Masala in this race.

It's in many ways, it's in many ways a race between big Mississippi Masala and big real estate.

And New York City has to decide where they fall.

Oh, do you have a favorite movie about New York City?

You have a favorite New York City movie?

Favorite New York City movie.

I mean, you know, one answer is do the right thing.

I think another answer, I also, you know, we're talking about we're talking about my mom.

I also got to shout out.

My mom made a documentary.

very in the very early days called So Far From India, where it was a documentary all profiling a bodega owner and how it was for him and his life and the distance from India and where he grew up.

All right, everyone, put that in the queue.

Now,

I want to talk about your dad for a second.

In doing some research for today's show, I came across a really hilarious anecdote that you're sorry, anecdote that your dad tells about how he was introduced to the works of Karl Marx.

Are you familiar with the story?

I'm referencing.

All right, could you share it with our audience?

Oh, here we go.

So,

my dad gets to this country in 1962.

He is a student at University of Pittsburgh.

He has never been to the United States before, and he's here to become an electrical engineer, to become an engineer, really.

And

a few months into his time at Pittsburgh,

he hears students walking down the hallway singing, which side are you on?

And they were members of the Student

Nonviolent Coordinating Committee who were recruiting recruiting students to get on the bus to Montgomery, Alabama.

And my dad hears it and he gets up and he gets on the bus and he goes down and he marches, he gets hosed, he gets beaten, he gets thrown in jail.

He calls as this one phone call, the Ugandan ambassador.

He's like, hey, can you get me out?

And the ambassador is like, what the hell are you doing in jail in the United States?

We sent you there to study.

And my dad says, well, well, we got the scholarship as a reward for our freedom and I'm here fighting for their freedom.

It's the same fight.

He gets let out.

A few weeks later, he gets a knock on the door and it's the FBI.

And he's quite taken aback because it looks like how it's presented in the movies and it's

quite something.

And these FBI agents, they ask him, you know, do you know?

Karl Marx?

And he says, no, I don't.

Like, you know, who is he?

Where is he?

He's like, no, he's dead.

My dad says, well, I'm sorry about that.

And he says, no, no, no.

Like, he's been dead for a while.

So he's like, well, why are you here to talk to me about it?

Well, you know, he didn't, he believed that poor people shouldn't be poor.

I was like, well, it sounds great.

And the FBI clearly realized that this guy knows nothing about Karl Marx.

And they leave.

And then my dad, inspired by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, goes to the library and starts to pick up copies of Karl Marx's works.

So

he just assumed Karl Marx was a guy that they were asking him about.

Yeah.

A guy who recently died or maybe he was being questioned in relation to his death or something.

Yeah.

It's like, is he a student?

One last interesting factoid about your dad before I get into the state of the race.

Are you aware that the former U.S.

Senator Kristen Sinema wrote a book on the Rwandan genocide?

I'm vaguely familiar because I remember somebody tweeting about this.

It was a shock to me.

But in that book, she cites your dad over 30 times.

He is the number one source for Kristen Sinema's book on the Rwandan genocide.

I want to be very clear.

I want to be very clear.

He's the number one source for that book, but not for her political trajectory that took place after she wrote that book.

We have nothing to do with it.

Do you think maybe she failed to absorb at least some of the things that your dad that she was citing from your father?

Look,

my father's book on the Rwandan genocide is called When Victims Become Killers.

And I think she may.

Yeah.

Might have to dust that one.

Might have to dust that one off again.

All right.

I've misunderstood.

All right, Jeron, let's get into the mayor's race because this is why you're here.

And like, you know, you've, you've, you've stepped into this race and you've really shaken, like, you've, you've, you've injected a lot of, um, I think, enthusiasm into this race, certainly from, you know, people like me who, you know, broadly speaking would like to see a sort of Bernie Sanders style platform enacted in America's greatest number one city.

But like, what is, like, the state of the race, like, how would you describe like the state of the race as it currently is?

Because, like, I mean, you're, you're raising, like, similar to Bernie, you're having great success raising a lot of money from individual donors.

But like, you're, you're kind of neck and neck with the city controller Brad Lander right now.

But I got to be honest, in all the polls I'm reading, both of you are trailing 10 or 15 points behind a guy who's not even in the race yet.

So I got to ask, are you preparing for the Andrew Cuomo Death Star?

And like, don't, don't show me your cards or anything here, but like, are you prepared for that eventuality?

Absolutely.

It is something that it's a matter of of when, not a matter of if.

And he,

you know, his team calls people in the political world and calls journalists every week and says, you know, either it's this week or it's going to be next week.

And they just keep people on a perpetual

sense of there is an imminent announcement to come.

And even though he hasn't been in the race, he's been one of the most.

influential figures through the trajectory of this race, just his, the mere suggestion of his presence.

I think what, you know, the state of this race is even

with him on the brink of entering it, is a very unpredictable situation where we have a deeply unpopular incumbent, Eric Adams, and then we have someone who is similarly a disgraced executive, Andrew Cuomo, except he's former and not current and at the gubernatorial level.

And the challenge here really is to make both of these individuals answer for their record.

Because while Adams has a harder time getting away from his record since we're living through it right now, Cuomo's record is being replaced by the perception of what it actually was versus the reality.

And I think that's what makes me feel like this race is in no way over or in no way out of reach.

It is in fact one that is going to be a contest between

perception and reality.

And I'm really excited by it because, you know, when we started this race, I would say like maximum 1% of New Yorkers knew who I was.

And what we're seeing is the more and more more New Yorkers hear about this campaign and this campaign's plan to make New York City more affordable and actually speak to the level of crisis that people are living through, the more people are hungry for a different kind of politics.

And that is in direct contrast to Andrew Cuomo's approach to New York City.

Well, if only it were just Eric Adams, because I mean, like, I mean, you would be running against what is more or less the most openly corrupt mayor in New York City who is currently begging like a dog to Donald Trump for a pardon.

By the way, have you met Eric Adams in person?

Have you ever sat down at the table of a success?

And if so, what's he like?

I have met Eric Adams a few times.

I actually spoke to Eric Adams today because he came up to Albany,

which is where I'm at right now, for Tin Cup Day, which is what it's called when New York City mayors come every year to ask Albany

for support.

More Subway news.

Yeah.

Today I got three minutes to question him

where I asked him about if he'd let ICE agents into New York City public schools and how he could justify cutting more than $180 million in funding for for

early childhood education.

And he obviously, as he always does, refuses to answer any of these questions and just tries to play it off and get back to the table of success.

Like, so I mentioned that you've done extremely well raising money from individual donors because

the issues you talk about and the policies that you're running on really resonate with a lot of people.

But is it a critical mass of people to get you over a divided field?

Like you seem to have learned a lot of the lessons of like the Bernie campaign and are replicating a lot of them.

But like, have you learned any lessons from his loss?

And like, like, how are you, are you going to change anything to deal with, like, like I said, what is going to be a very difficult, a very strong opponent in Andrew Cuomo?

No, I think, you know, first, just to

put it directly, this campaign is very inspired by Bernie's 2016 and 2020 runs.

I mean, Bernie was the person that gave me the language to call myself a democratic socialist.

It was that 2016 run when I realized that all these ideas that I thought were disparate and didn't actually fit together were bound by one political ideology.

And he was the messenger of that.

For me, and I'd say for millions of Americans, you know, I think the ways that we're seeking to build on that approach is by ensuring that we understand the most, the strongest part of that campaign is when it spoke in a universal language and when it spoke to everyone at all times, understanding that that is how we can build the broadest coalition.

And I have sought to do that throughout this campaign, focusing on a with a relentless focus on an economic agenda and figuring out how is it that we can distill the level of precarity that people are being forced to live through in this moment, the fact that it's being imposed on them through policy and political choices, and that we can change that and we can do that in direct ways.

And we opened the campaign with promises around freezing the rent, rents, making buses fast and free, and delivering universal child care.

And I think

what it has allowed us to do is build out a coalition that is already broader than what a lot of people thought we would be able to do in this campaign.

And I think that is, you know, in many ways, one of the lessons of Bernie is how do you ensure that when you catch enough momentum and catch enough fire, that you are ready for

when the establishment strikes back?

And that's why we can't ever just get carried away with momentum we always have to prepare for the inevitable backlash and make sure that we're doing those things in tandem now when when you talk about like these sort of broad universal policies that where you where you say to people like like i said but the buses should be free like uh there should be a cap on rents like across the city people say oh like that sounds good but like can you really get it done and like you know i saw brad lander the other day was sort of like couching this argument that i see particularly democrats do this all the time, where like they want to talk about like their realistic plans rather than a broad governing vision.

Because I think that allows them sometimes to neglect to speak to the fact that like the good thing that they say is impossible.

They don't even want that either.

So they're always like, well, sure, everyone should have health care, but like, no, you don't really want them to have health care.

So like, how do you respond to this idea that like, what are the plans really?

Or like, can you really do this?

Or like, sure, that sounds great, but like, it'll be impossible, largely because the people telling you that are going to make it as impossible as possible.

you know i i understand where the question is coming from and i understand it especially when it's coming from working class new yorkers who have been betrayed by politicians at every level of government over the course of their lives and are wary of putting their trust in yet another and the way that i build that trust over the course of a conversation is to show them just how feasible each one of these three demands is When we're talking about freezing the rent, that's something that Bill de Blasio did three times as the mayor of New York City in just the previous administration when we're talking about making buses fast and free that's something that I already took steps towards as an assembly member I launched a campaign called fix the MTA we won a historic free bus pilot we saw in making one bus route free in each borough that ridership went up by at least 30 percent assaults on bus drivers dropped by 38.9 percent And you know, more than 40 percent of new riders were making $28,000 or less.

The same kind of people we say we want to get when we do means means-tested programs, but they're also the same ones that we fail to capture in those programs because which working class person is ready to hop through 10 different hoops of a bureaucracy that has already failed them.

And then when we talk about universal child care, I just point to examples right around us.

I mean, in Quebec across the border, when they invested in universal child care, they saw a 10 to 1 return.

in terms of their economic investment.

And what we're seeing right now is if we don't do it, we are basically ushering people out of New York City.

Because after rent, childcare is the number number one expense that is driving people out of the five boroughs because it can cost $20,000 to $25,000 a year.

So these things are doable.

It's just a question of political will.

And I think this Washington, D.C.

style approach of, you know, to say something that is good and that is worthy and that is needed is to engage in some politics of the unrealistic when in fact the point of politics is to make the principled possible.

And for too long, politics has been something where we're told, just make the possible principle.

Yeah, you know, I mean, I think this focus on like the like technocratic, like, how do you get it done?

Or like, that's not realistic.

Where are the votes?

I think that just obscures a kind of like a need to advertise what your sort of governing vision and ideology and I don't know, morality really is.

So if you like couch everything in this idea of like, I mean, look, it's necessary because like, you know, ideally you will be elected and people will expect something from you.

But like, I think there should be something to say said for like sort of blue sky thinking about like, look, you're going to vote for me and like I'll try to do this and maybe it'll get done, maybe it won't.

But like, here's what I stand for.

Here's what I believe in.

Yeah.

And I think it's there is an urgency in people's lives.

And that urgency needs to be reflected in politicians' platforms.

And I think too often we let ourselves get led by financial assessments.

as opposed to working with those same kind of office of management and budget in the city administration to figure out how do we accomplish our actual political program.

I mean, when Bill de Blasio ran in 2013, he ran on a three-part platform, and stop and frisk, tax the rich to fund Universal Pre-K.

And he was running on that knowing that he was going to need a lot of that money for the second and third parts from Albany, which was being run then by Governor Andrew Cuomo, who had zero interest in taxing the rich.

probably even less interest in working with Bill de Blasio.

And still, because that political program was so popular, de Blasio was able to get get hundreds of millions of dollars in new revenue from Albany to fund Universal Pre-K, which is probably one of the most impressive

social goods that has been delivered by government in New York City in a long time, if not across this country.

Yeah, I mean, speaking of Andrew Cuomo, like, I mean,

if you'll accept any advice from

the campaign co-chair over here, in terms of running against him, like,

you make a good point that, like, Eric Adams' disgrace is currently all around him, whereas Cuomo has been out of the public eye for a couple years now.

And honestly, I think New Yorkers basically don't remember or don't care about the thing he left office over.

However, we're living in a time now where like Democrats, average Democrat voters, not like DSA socialist people, but like average Democratic voters, are furious at their party of what they see as not just a failure to stand up to Donald Trump, but like ongoing collaboration with a reckless and feral Republican party.

I think Andrew Cuomo's role in the independent Democratic caucus and like making sure that Republicans kept control of our state legislature when they had absolutely no reason and no business doing so would be a good place to start.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, it showcases a man for whom power is more important than principle at every single juncture.

This is someone who would prefer Republicans to have power as he did while he was the governor so that he would not have to enact progressive legislation.

so that he would not have to actually be the person that he was advertising to the rest of the state and the country.

And his record, while a lot of the focus has rightfully been around sexual harassment and sexual assault, there is an immense record of a bankruptcy of political leadership, whether it is from

what he did with nursing homes to what he did with the MTA.

I mean, a lot of us remember the summer of hell in 2017, which was something where, you know, like an F train was was in the tunnel for 30 minutes.

It pulled into the station, windows fogged, people just trying to get out.

This was becoming a normal occurrence for people.

And it was because Andrew Cuomo was refusing to fund the MTA and taking money meant for public transit and giving it to upstate ski resorts.

That's the governor that we had.

And that's the questions that he has to answer.

But what he's going to try and do is pretend that he is bringing back a level of leadership and stability that he has always sought to telegraph when in reality, it's just austerity and cruelty.

Speaking to me, just like, to get back to policy for a second, I've described, at least on a national level, Medicare for all as the policy that would require the shortest distance to travel to help the most amount of lives in this country, to do the most amount of tangible good.

And by that, I mean, like, it's already broadly popular.

The legislation is already written.

And it's like, yes, certainly

a fight would have to be undertaken to pass legislation like this.

But like, it's not completely out of the,

it's not like saying, oh, we should like invent clean energy or I don't know like go to Mars or something like that it's not like it's not crazy what other you mentioned three policies already but like let's say you were elected day one what's the one policy that certainly would require a flight but like what's a day one policy that you think if enacted would do the most good in the shortest amount of time for New Yorkers most good in the shortest amount of time on day one would be freezing the rent for more than 2 million New Yorkers When we're talking about that, it's a reference to the fact that the mayor runs the Rent guidelines board, which is a board composed of nine members, all of whom are appointed by the mayor.

And this board sets the rent for every rent stabilized unit across New York City, which is a form of housing that more than 2 million New Yorkers live in.

And the median household income for those units is $60,000.

They have historically been the sites of economic stability in a city where costs continue to rise.

And Eric Adams made them the site of rent hike after rent hike after rent hike.

And if you can freeze the rent, which we have seen done before,

what you are allowing New Yorkers to do, some of whom are the most working class of this city, is to actually see their future.

This is what a woman named Jasmine told me in the Bronx when she said, that's what brought her into this campaign, was that she could actually see herself in this city, see the world that she could actually live in, because finally she knew what.

amount of money to expect from her rent as opposed to the terror that many tenants live through where they they simply don't even know how much money their landlord is going to ask for them when their lease is up.

Yeah, I think housing would be probably like the number one issue facing New York City right now.

Like the affordability of rent, the rent market in New York City right now is insane.

I saw a video you put out the other day.

Could you talk about the building plan to build a lot of like new public housing?

Like what would that look like?

So the plan that we just released was to build 200,000 units of union-built, permanently affordable, rent-stabilized housing.

And that would be tripling what the city is currently set to build over the next 10 years.

The reason that we led with the necessity of the public sector picking up a share of responsibility for this housing crisis is that when you rely almost exclusively on private developers, you are relying on an industry for whom the most important

aspect of all business they do is profit.

And what we need right now is for government to understand its role in actually constructing, creating, and preserving housing that is deeply affordable, that is the kind of housing that New Yorkers who cannot afford market rate can actually still find a home.

And what we're talking about here is, you know, housing for the family of four that makes $70,000 a year, housing for low-income seniors, housing for

New Yorkers who are living in shelters who have approved vouchers that could pay a landlord $3,000 a month, but they can't find a landlord who's willing to accept that voucher because of discrimination.

And instead, they live in a city where the Adams administration has cut funding for source of income discrimination such as that.

So there's no consequence for those landlords.

This is about those New Yorkers who are left out of the housing market as it is today.

Do you have any idea about where

these housing units would be built?

And could you talk a little bit more about the union construction element of this plan?

Absolutely.

You know, I think at its core, union construction and the commitment to working with unions is the belief that if you build this housing, you should be able to afford to live in this housing.

And that we need to pay people the kind of money such that they can continue to call themselves New Yorkers.

And furthermore, union sites are safer.

They are also sites where we know that we are actually not going to have to deal with so much of the

regular violations of the law that we see at a lot of non-union sites across New York City.

And you know what?

Just a quick shot out of nowhere at Robert De Niro, because that is a man who's like the Tribeca Tribeca.

That is a man who has called himself a union man.

He accepted a lifetime achievement award from SAG.

And he built a movie studio in Astoria with non-union labor.

And I was like, come on, dude like this is just anyway back back back yeah you're talking to me you're talking to me uh but

you're talking this non-union work site yeah i am but uh

all right uh but like uh do you have any idea about where where this construction would take place would this be spread out across the five boroughs are you looking at one major site this would be across the five boroughs um and this would

what it would also do is utilize publicly owned land that we currently have to expedite that process.

There's a lot of vacant lots that the city owns.

They're also land that the city owns that it's not currently using to its most productive use.

And what we could do is take that ownership and leverage it to actually build the kind of affordable housing that New Yorkers need.

Because so much of the prohibitive costs of building in New York City is procuring the land.

And therefore, the city government is already one step ahead of where most developers are.

And, you know, another problem is that, like, I've lived in the city as long as I have.

I've heard the phrase affordable housing evoked over and again

by administration after administration.

And the reality of it is, it's not affordable.

Like, for instance, when they built the Barclays Center and they were like, okay, the city's going to give you to this real estate developer all this money to build a place for the Nets and the Islanders to play.

But you have to build X amount of rent, like units of affordable housing.

Well, the thing is,

what determines what's affordable is based on the median income of the zip code it's built in, which in this case is Park Slope.

So that's about like, I don't know, 70, 80 grand a year.

so the rents based on those units are not going to be affordable to a working family in New York City.

Yeah, I think it's, it's, and it's the story of development across New York City in many ways, right?

The broken promises from developers, as well as affordable starting to lose any aspect of its true meaning.

You know, it begs the question we always hear, which is affordable to who?

And I mean, I'd represent Steinway Street in Astoria and

we have affordable in quotation mark units coming up that I tell my constituents about.

And it's like, hey, you know, this new affordable unit came up and you need to earn $140,000 to apply to live in that studio.

And that's in many ways what it ends up looking and feeling like is a government subsidized production of units that are at the same level of market rate units.

That's how it has felt for a long time.

I mean, like, the problem is here, is that like, you know, housing policy is sort of like this cool thing or urbanism.

And it's always talked about like, oh, we have a housing supply problem.

And they're like, they get halfway there, but like in a city or like New York City or any city that's very desirable to live in, anytime like where the rent is dictated by the market is never going to be affordable.

And it's only going to go up and make the city itself unlivable for the people who work in it.

Yeah, I think that that's why we have to take a multi-pronged approach to this.

I think like, you know, I agree that we need to.

that we need to build more housing around, you know, transit hubs.

I agree that we need to repeal requirements to build parking lots as part of housing, that we need to upzone wealthier neighborhoods that have not created the kind of housing that is needed across every neighborhood.

And I also think that if you leave all of this simply to developers, you are going to end up with the kinds of rezonings and

developments that we've seen time and again, which often do not hit the unit amount they say they will and often break the community promises that they that they commit to at the beginning of that process.

And that's why it's so important that, yes, we construct more housing and we also construct a specific kind of housing.

So people who already live in New York City can afford to live in New York City.

I think that's the thing that, you know, it's often framed in this long-term supply question, but we have to have answers for the more than 100,000 New Yorkers who live in shelters right now.

We have to have answers for people who are living in an apartment today.

that they cannot afford to keep their family in any longer because the rent is so prohibitive.

That's who this this plan is seeking to finally get answers to.

Well, let's put a number on this here.

What should be the most amount of rent that someone should be able to charge on, let's say, a one-bedroom apartment in New York City?

I can tell you the amount of rent that when I hear it for a one-bedroom, I'm like, this is just, I'm still having trouble believing that anywhere in the 2000s is a good deal for a one-bedroom in New York City.

It's, that's how it's framed, and it's just hard to square.

Try twice as much as that someplaces.

Yeah.

I mean, no, but, but, but I just mean like, you know, these are what pass for good deals now and great deals because of just how insane our market has become.

Well, if you have any luck freezing the rent, I'm sure the landlord and real estate developing lobby will be their current, when they, if they listen to this episode, they're currently going to rentahitman.com.

I'm freezing that rent, too.

I'm freezing that rent too.

They can't get that rent.

The next three issues I want to talk about that are like are sure to be a feature of any election in New York City, but definitely this one as well.

There are three issues that I think are all intertwined, and you really can't talk about one without talking about the other.

And they are the subway and public transportation, policing and crime, and homelessness.

Like all three of these issues have become very intertwined in the public consciousness.

And the fact of the matter is, people feel less safe than they feel less safe.

on the subways than they did before.

And you can argue about like, well, you know, like, has crime really gone up that much?

Or like crime certainly was way higher when you and I were going to like middle school for instance but like it doesn't really do any good to say oh well it's not as bad as it used to be or hey the murder rate's only gone up slightly how do you speak to like people's justified concerns about their safety while still like having to kind of remind people that New York City is still the safest large city in America I think you have to respond to how people are actually feeling.

You have to respond to the experiences that people have had and continue to have.

And yes, you need to ground that in an accurate context, an accurate depiction of what is the larger

set of statistics about crime and the breakdown category by category and how it compares to other years.

But I think for far too long, Democrats come to political debates and argument with statistics and with a visualization of how you should actually feel the complete opposite way that you are feeling right now.

When in fact, people want to be listened to as the first reaction to what it is that they're telling you.

And I'm really excited about a proposal that we're going to be putting out there in the next couple, you know, months to two months, which will directly address these issues by creating a new department within city government that will

have teams that are trained specifically.

to respond to mental health crises and conduct homelessness outreach in the manner that we've seen already successful in cities across the country, whether it's Denver or Eugene or Olympia, and to do this kind of work, all while we also revitalize our public transit system.

And what I mean by that is, look, I remember after we whooped Cathedral's ass, I would get on the one train to the, and then I would transfer 96th Street to the two train, and then I would go to Times Square and I would transfer to another train.

And when I'd be transferring, I would walk by a store that was in the center of the station that was selling CDs, selling headphones.

I remember very well.

I know it very well.

Yeah, exactly.

Right next to the bathrooms.

And that store is gone now.

That store is a vacant commercial unit now.

And that is the nature of so many of the stores that we grew up with across the subway system.

And it is a crisis.

And it's also an opportunity.

for us to take those vacant commercial units and make them the sites where we actually provide services to New Yorkers, whether they are experiencing mental mental health crises or they're being forced to sleep on our subway platforms.

That's the kind of work that we need to do.

And I think for far too long, we haven't presented an affirmative vision of how we will actually deal with questions of public safety.

We've told New Yorkers that there's two options.

nobody on the platform with you or a police officer on the platform with you.

And I'm really excited that our campaign is going to be offering the idea that you could have and should and deserve to have someone there on that platform and they deserve to be trained specifically for that kind of work as opposed to a cop who's been given yet another task that we have determined is only going to be handled by the NYPD.

And like, what would that outreach look like?

Like, what would that interaction between someone who's trained to do this and someone who is homeless on a subway platform or car look like?

And like, what would be

the next step from that interaction for that individual who's, you know, in crisis or just sleeping rough or whatever?

I think there are a number of things.

You know, one thing that comes to mind is there are about, give or take, about 4,000 New Yorkers who sleep at our subway stations right now, whose home really is the subway station, which is both, it is horrific that we have allowed it to reach to that level.

And it's also an amount and a number of people that is actually likely lower than what people think it is.

It's a number of New Yorkers that we could house tomorrow.

There are more vacant supportive units of housing than there are New Yorkers sleeping on subway platforms.

And we know that that because a recent article came out that showed that when New Yorkers were homeless were applying for supportive housing and they were found to be eligible, the city only got back to about 20% of them.

And four of those applicants died before the city got back to them about housing them in supportive housing units.

So I think one thing is actually having an administration that prioritizes putting New Yorkers into housing.

and takes New Yorkers who are interested in getting out of the subway stations and into a place to call their own.

The other thing I would say that comes to mind is the necessity of having a lot of this outreach work be built upon a peer-to-peer model.

What I mean by that is there is

a model called clubhouses, where you have clubhouses.

One of them is called Fountain House, where you have New Yorkers who have experienced mental health crises, potentially experiencing them in that moment, are surrounded by other New Yorkers that they develop relationships with, that they develop trust with, and that they know that if they go through a breakdown, they can actually rely on to pick them back up without the judgment that is endemic across society in those kinds of moments.

And I was really moved by this because I read an article by an individual who had been hospitalized 20 times, who had been sleeping on the subway for much of two years.

And we hear about this and you read it.

And then when I looked at the name, this was a guy that I used to go to political meetings with in 2019, 2020.

I remember sitting next to him.

I remember debating issues with him.

And I hadn't seen him in years.

And I found out that he had become yet another New Yorker for whom that was the only place they could go.

And he wrote in this article about how going to Fountainhouse transformed his ability to live a stable and fulfilling life.

And it was because of that trust-based peer model.

So I think it's a mixture of actually efficient bureaucracy and government that is seeking to take anyone who applies and putting them into housing, having teams that are trained specifically for this work, and having a peer model that understands that for many homeless New Yorkers or for many New Yorkers who are experiencing mental health crises, the most helpful thing is for them to meet someone who has gone through that same experience and will hold their hand to the next stage of it.

I mean, like, and thinking about homelessness as an issue, like, I think that what you're talking about is promising, but like, wouldn't there need to be like a significant city or a state investment in just mental health hospitals and drug rehab facilities?

Because, like, these are like the conjoined crises of people living, you know, on the absolute fringe of society, which is usually a mix of severe drug addiction and mental illness.

Like, that's that's what makes people feel unsafe on the subway.

And, like,

what resources can the state and city bring to bear on just providing, like, you know, not just like shelter for people who are suffering from mental illness or drug addiction, but like treatment and help?

You know, I think that it's fitting that we spoke about Andrew Cuomo at the beginning of this conversation because he is in many ways responsible for the decimating of city and state capacity to deal with a crisis like this.

This is someone who closed hospitals, who closed a lot of the very kinds of resources that would be the ones we would turn to to assist New Yorkers who are going through this kind of an experience.

There are a few things I'd add.

One, I would separate out homelessness and mental health crises because a lot of times they're conflated as if it's one conversation.

When we're talking about homelessness, the number one issue there is can you put, can you find housing for someone?

That is what, you know, very good point.

And I think that's the problem with homelessness, as George Collins said, is not having a house.

Yeah.

The thing that's so frustrating is it's treated as if it is something we could never solve.

when we could truly put every New Yorker sleeping on a subway platform into supportive housing because we have those units ready to go if the city actually wanted to do that work.

In terms of the funding around, you know, you were saying, mental health services, it so often in Albany, and I see it right now as a state legislator, when we are going through what we are right now in our subway systems where people are not feeling safe and there are more and more New Yorkers going through mental health crises, the reaction is, let's just make it easier to involuntarily commit a New Yorker to an institution.

And I think a lot of that is driven by the failures of the model that we have pursued thus far,

but frankly also by the unwillingness of the political establishment to actually fund the kind of work that needs to be done that provides New Yorkers with different outcomes.

And when I go back to that story about the individual at Fountain House, part of the reason I do that is because the vision for what New York City should look like is a clubhouse model in every single neighborhood.

It is that there are these kinds of spaces that are funded where New Yorkers can go there, can be there, can actually have a support system as opposed to just a place where they go, get medication, then leave and are left to go back into the subway system.

All right.

We don't have too much more time, but I do want to get to two very important issues.

I mentioned policing, and

you got a lot of burnt eye.

I saw a lot of people enjoying the recent interview you did with Ben Smith, where you informed him that the NYPD's PR department staffs about 80 people.

So once again, the question is, how do you address people's concerns about crimes with the need to state openly and frankly that the NYPD has way too much fucking money?

You know, I think part of it is by distilling where that money is spent.

A lot of people think of the NYPD purely through

the lens of police officers in my neighborhood.

And when you are able to go line item by line item and say, look, this is a police department with more than 80 communications staffers who are developing, you know, high-quality drone footage of Columbia University invading.

Yeah, they're bringing out the Oxford University Press, a very short introduction to terrorism.

Yeah.

That's what the budget goes to.

You know, and I think when, because I am someone who believes the NYPD, especially under Adams, has had a culture of impunity.

And I say that plainly and directly.

And I talk about how I would eliminate the NYPD's more than billion-dollar overtime budget.

I would disband the NYPD strategic response group, the unit it has that polices protests, that has often violated New Yorkers' rights as they conduct that policing.

That has also cost the city more than $100 million.

I would

drastically reduce the scope and size of the communications department.

And I would also, in a similar vein to the Department of Corrections, would cancel Mayor Adams' proposal, spend $225 million on the construction of a cop city in Queens.

Now, these things,

I say them to everyone.

And there are New Yorkers for whom public safety is the number one issue.

They want to see, you know, I've had people tell me I want to see more police officers.

When I say this to them, they don't view this in conflict with how they see the city because this is fundamentally removed from their sense of safety.

And I'm saying that with them.

And I'm talking about an affirmative vision around the creation of this new department within the city.

And

that is a recognition of how important the issue is and also a sketching out of an alternative means by which to provide that safety beyond just the NYPD.

The last issue I'm going to bring up is a global issue.

New York is a global city.

And I mean this seriously.

We've seen over the last year and a half or so, New York City government, in collusion with the New York City Police Department and private interests, basically conspire to savagely curtail the First Amendment rights of pro-Palestinian protesters at Colombia, certainly, but also in the city's city university system.

So, this is one issue that separates you from any other candidate in this race, and one that is sure to put a huge target on your back.

So, let me ask you: if you get elected mayor,

what steps can your government take to protect the rights of our First Amendment rights to political protests rather than infringe them?

I wish Eric Adams hadn't set such a low bar on this question and, frankly, on almost every question.

But what we've had is a mayor who for a long time said that he sent the NYPD to Columbia and to CUNY at the behest of those institutions, but recently has come forward and said that he was begging them to send the cops.

He was begging them to allow him to send a militarized police force to storm the institutions of higher education.

And I'm the only candidate.

that has come out and said that I would not have sent the police officers to Columbia University in the manner that Adams did.

And I would not, because if we are Democrats who talk about how the presence of guns on school property is dangerous when it's elementary schools or middle schools or high schools, then why is it that we have a complete sense of contradiction when it comes to institutions of higher education?

Because as we saw that when Adams sent the NYPD onto Columbia's campus, one of those officers discharged their weapon, which was the closest thing that we got

to a, I mean, a Kent state in New York City.

And it was the most unsafe incident that occurred throughout this entire set of protests and encampments.

And it was in the NYPD response to it.

And I think what I would do is be very clear that as a mayor, I would lead this city with a universal application of humanity.

I would not pick and choose who I would give the rights of life and liberation and safety and security to.

I would apply them to all people.

And what we've seen is a mayor who's unwilling to do that when it comes to Palestinians.

And he's shown himself to be unwilling through a justification of killing children, through a denial of calls for a ceasefire, through going on Zoom calls with billionaires, and then soon after sending the cops into these kinds of institutions.

And it would be a very clear directive from my administration to the NYPD that new yorkers' civil liberties and civil rights must be respected in a manner that we have not seen under eric outs but like when you say that though what like what is your response going to be when pretty much the entire new york media and everyone running against you says that you either either are a supporter of terrorism or an immediate existential threat to the safety of jewish new yorkers look i have been I've had to deal with these kinds of mischaracterizations for as long as I've stood up for Palestinian human rights.

And that was actually my entryway into politics in this country.

I co-founded a Students for Justice in Palestine at my college.

It was the first one that we'd had.

And I can tell you that when you do that, you don't do it dreaming of this is how you're going to run for elected office in New York City or in the United States.

And

the reason I feel comfortable and confident about this is that I've been very clear.

And that as I have stood up and said these things

time and again, I've found that there are far more New Yorkers that actually empathize and agree than what we are told.

And that especially when, you know, as you were saying, that the classic characterization of any critique of Israel as being anti-Semitic, I have made these critiques.

I have stood up for Palestine human rights, and I have done so often arm in arm with.

hundreds and thousands of Jewish New Yorkers.

And I think that what that has shown to so many people is

the very clear difference between a critique of Zionism and a critique of Judaism, and the fact that it is something that is quite popular to stand up and say that Palestinians deserve that which every other people deserve across the world.

Zoran, I didn't cover everything I wanted to get to you today, but I want to leave you with one request from me.

I'm going to pitch you a campaign issue that

I think may be controversial.

I think that if you spearhead this, you will activate a silent majority of New Yorkers and a groundswell of support for you.

So, what a phrase.

Mr.

Mamdani, if elected mayor, will you commit here to officially ban from all public New York City events the playing of the Jay-Z Alicia Keese song, Empire State of Mind?

Yes, yes.

Done.

Mr.

Mamdani, won't you please be my mayor?

We are playing Soup Boys by Hemes.

That is how I'm going to be walking in to the briefing.

Yes, we deserve a new soundtrack for a new city, and we're excited to thank you.

And then finally, Zoran, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us.

But seriously,

if any of our listeners would like to get involved in your campaign in some way to donate,

what can our listeners do if they like what they hear?

And they're either New Yorkers or they want to support the idea of having someone like you in charge of the executive branch of the largest city in America.

Well, absolutely.

First of all, I'd say shout outs to you.

Thank you very much for feeling that.

And then I would say go to zeronfornyc.com.

That's Z-O-H-R-A-N-F-O-R-N-Y-C.

You'll see our platform.

You'll also see how to get involved.

And I would ask everyone to donate, especially if you do not, if you're not able to volunteer, donating is an incredibly helpful way to build this campaign.

We have raised 642K for more than 6,500 people, more money than any other campaign in the last filing, for more people than every other campaign combined.

And we still need to raise a ton more because for us to win this more affordable New York City, we're going to have to run a fully funded campaign.

We're going to have to get to about, you know, $1.6, $1.7 million.

So if you can donate $10, $20, $50, whatever.

And then also if you can come out in Canvas, we would love to have you because we're going to knock on more than a million doors to make sure.

every New Yorker knows that we could freeze their rent, make their bus fast and free, and deliver universal child care.

Truly.

NYC will continue to be number one, but it will be even more number one than it was before.

Zoran, I will leave you once again saying, Mr.

Mamdani, won't you please be my mayor?

Thank you, my man.

Cheers, everybody.

Till next time.

Bye-bye.