New York, United States – Sprawling crowds, a seven-block-long party and chants to “tax the rich” in the world’s wealthiest city marked Zohran Mamdani’s public inauguration as New York City mayor on Thursday, as the metropolis welcomed a new year with a new leadership.
Political inaugurations are usually more stolid affairs. But, as he had in his campaign for the mayoralty, Mamdani flipped the script with his swearing-in events.
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In act one, just after midnight, as the ball dropped in Times Square to ring in 2026, Mamdani took the oath of office in a small ceremony on the steps of the landmark New York City Hall subway station.
New York State Attorney General Letitia James administered the oath as Mamdani stood beside his wife, Rama Duwaji, on a staircase inside the transit hub, which has not been used for passenger service since 1945. He used a historic Quran borrowed from the New York Public Library for his swearing in, and a second one that belonged to his grandfather.
The public celebration arrived later, on New Year’s Day, when Mamdani repeated the oath on the steps of City Hall before a crowd that spilled across the surrounding plaza and into the streets. Despite the blistering cold, tens of thousands of supporters streamed into Lower Manhattan to watch the new mayor – along with the city’s comptroller, Mark Levine, and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams – formally assume office.
National political heavyweights, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, flanked the city’s new leadership and delivered speeches outlining the progressive movement’s governing ambitions in New York and the national reverberations the race has already sent to lawmakers across the country.
“The most important lesson that can be learned today is that when working people stand, when they don’t let them [the ultra-wealthy] divide us up, there is nothing that we cannot accomplish,” Sanders said before swearing in Mamdani.
While guests and the press gathered inside the City Hall grounds, the city staged a seven-block-long public block party – a new twist on the traditionally ticketed inauguration format. In addition to a closed event capped at a few thousand attendees, anyone willing to RSVP and endure the frigid air and blustering winds after a night of snowfall could try their luck at getting in.
And many did, bundled New Yorkers shuffled through security checkpoints, hoping to glimpse the swearing-in of a 34-year-old democratic socialist now charged with running the largest city in the United States, streaming on large monitors stationed throughout the surrounding area outside City Hall.
Some supporters told Al Jazeera they waited in line for hours, and many never made it through the checkpoints in time. While crowds cheered and horns blasted in solidarity from a distance, a handful of protesters lingered behind police barricades.
The block party in and of itself was symbolic in its effort to reach more New Yorkers who have normally been left out of the political process, Democratic strategist Nomiki Konst told Al Jazeera.
“It was a way of opening up something that hasn’t been accessible for anybody, you know, that wasn’t part of the inner circle of New York politics and media,” Konst told Al Jazeera.
“It was an opportunity to give back to the people who helped him get into office.”
![New Yorkers gathered in a first of its kind inauguration open to the general public [Andy Hirschfeld]](https://i0.wp.com/occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/IMG_6332-1767314647.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
A message of unity and affordability
Mamdani, Williams and Levine spoke about unity for all New Yorkers, delivering remarks in English, Spanish, Hebrew and Greek, and appearing alongside faith leaders of several different faiths, including Islam, Christianity and Judaism.
“We have three swearings-in. One by a leader using a Quran, one by a leader using a Christian Bible, and one using a Hebrew Bible. I am proud to live in a city where this is possible,” Levine said after taking the oath of office.
Mamdani echoed that sentiment.
“We will draw this city closer together. We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism. If our campaign demonstrated that the people of New York yearn for solidarity, then let this government foster it,” Mamdani said in his address.
“We will deliver nothing less as we work each day to make this city belong to more of its people than it did the day before.”
But the core message, voiced repeatedly by Mamdani, Levine, Williams, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, was the same one that defined the campaign: that the ultra wealthy should pay higher taxes.
“Demanding that the wealthy and large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes is not radical. It is exactly the right thing to do,” Sanders said, as supporters chanted, “Tax the rich.”
One of Mamdani’s core promises was to raise the corporate tax rate in New York City from 7.25 percent to 11.5 percent, equivalent to that of neighbouring New Jersey, as well as a 2 percent increase in taxes on those who make more than $1m a year. Any tax plan would need the approval of the governor to move forward.
“This movement came out of eight-and-a-half million somewheres – taxi cab depots and Amazon warehouses, DSA [Democratic Socialists of America] meetings and curbside domino games. The powers that be had looked away from these places for quite some time – if they’d known about them at all – so they dismissed them as nowhere. But in our city, where every corner of these five boroughs holds power, there is no nowhere and there is no no one,” Mamdani said.
Housing policy has been central to that affordability message for Mamdani. One of his signature campaign promises was to freeze the rent on the city’s rental stabilised apartments, which represent about half of the city’s rental housing stock.
“Those in rent-stabilised homes will no longer dread the latest rent hike – because we will freeze the rent,” Mamdani said in his remarks.
Only hours later, Mamdani introduced a slate of executive orders all aimed at housing.
“On the first day of this new administration, on the day when so many rent payments are due, we will not wait to deliver action,” Mamdani said at a news conference.
He announced three executive orders inside a rent-stabilised building in Brooklyn, including the creation of two new city task forces on housing policy: one to take inventory of city-owned land that could be used for housing, and another to identify ways to spur development.
“The housing crisis is at the centre of our affordability crisis. There are a number of things we are going to be focused on: protecting tenants, going after bad landlords, and building more housing. A huge part of how we get out of our housing crisis is to build more affordable housing across the city,” Leila Bozorg, the Deputy Mayor for Housing and Planning, told Al Jazeera on the steps of City Hall hours before announcing the new policies.
“These are policy decisions we can address if we have the political will and if we put the resources behind it. And that is what he [Mamdani] is committed to doing.”