New York is a tale of a million cities. A city of arts, of finance; a melting pot, a crucible. We’ve got the most billionaires on earth, while one in three residents faces food insecurity. The largest Muslim population in the country — and the largest Jewish, Chinese, and Dominican communities, too. Yesterday, between the hours of 6am and 9pm, this cacophony of voices, this messy congregation, got a chance to speak aloud who we want to be.
I heard the celebration before I received the notification: Zohran Mamdani will be the 111th mayor of New York City. Our first Muslim mayor, elected a quarter-century after the ugly wave of Islamophobia following 9/11, which the sitting president of the United States continues to inflame. Our youngest in more than a century. He represents a more equitable future, a more hopeful one, a kinder one. A culmination of what it looks like to dream together across lifetimes.
Vox populi, indeed. But beyond the ballot box, memes are another way the people speak — one of the most populist avenues of expression we have, the graffiti of the internet age. In the last almost-decade, beginning 2016 — the first of my adult life, the first since I’ve had a vote — those have mostly been the laugh-to-keep-from-weeping variety, for obvious reasons. We’ve used them to unravel the real-time martyrdom of false prophets, to defuse the destructive potential of xenophobic violence, to air out our grievances. But we also use them to give voice to our hope. And of course, we use them to celebrate.
My fellow New Yorkers, in your own words:
And also in Kamala Harris’s words:
We laughed, we cried, we got White boy wasted:
This election gave us hope, and not just for the city:
We got some representation — speaking not as an Asian American at this moment, but as a baddie:
The “Graphic Design Is My Passion” among us found a muse:
We clowned on racist takes, laying bare the ridiculousness at their core:
Sharia law? More like —
We made in-jokes so particular that even this lifelong New Yorker had to look them up:
But we’ve got to take a minute to give some props to all the losers of the night, starting with the New York Post, the poet laureate of the unhinged right. I mean, come on:
And, of course, loser incarnate, Andrew Cuomo, roasted by a politician who actually won their election, no less:
We’ve got to give an honorable mention to Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, because no New York City mayoral election would be complete without a guy who’s essentially a ready-made meme:
Speaking of readymade memes, a courtesy Eric Adams mention.
God, I love New York.
