New York City – In the Bronx’s Morrisania neighbourhood, you often hear a familiar refrain: “Mamdani, Mamdani, Mamdani”.
Home to a fast-growing West African community – including many new-immigrant Muslims – Morrisania is among many areas where identity issues of race converge with the needs of the working class ahead of New York’s November 4 mayoral election.
Many in this community are counting on 34-year-old candidate Zohran Mamdani to win.
After all, a victory for Mamdani over former Governor Andrew Cuomo would mark a series of historic firsts for New York City – its first Muslim mayor, the first born in Africa, and the first person of South Asian descent to lead the largest city in the United States.
It is a fact that has sparked hope – and grim reminders of entrenched Islamophobia and xenophobia – across the diverse Muslim communities interwoven into the fabric of the city.
But for Aicha Donza, a shop owner in Morrisania, the Bronx, where annual incomes are half the city’s average, it is the avowed Democratic Socialist’s message of affordability – ambitious pledges for free buses, rent freezes on certain buildings, and universal childcare, paid for, in part, by increasing taxes on the wealthy – that has won her support.
“He says he’s going to make things easier,” Donza told Al Jazeera, showing off the wares in her store: plantain powder from Ghana; Liberian palm oil imported from the country where she was born; traditional Islamic garb imported from Turkiye, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
“The rent is so high, every day people come into the store, they say the prices are too high,” she said. “And free buses, if he can manage that, that would make a huge difference”.
Outside of the nearby Islamic Cultural Center of the Bronx, following afternoon prayers, Essa Tunkala, 60, ruminated over what the election could mean for the neighbourhood, a melting pot of both working-class trades – parking attendants, cab drivers, and store workers – and West African diaspora.
“It’s almost like you’re in West Africa,” Tunkala grinned, listing residents from Senegal, Liberia, Ghana, Togo, and Mali, to name a few.
He pointed to several serious questions that continue to hang over Mamdani’s run: How will he actualise his vision? Will he be able to rise above the relatively limited ability of the mayoral position to build the kind of coalition with state officials and lawmakers needed to realise his marquee pledges?
“But we need fresh ideas to create opportunities,” said Tunkala, who is originally from the Gambia and sells sporting goods from a table on the street. “This is a new generation with new ideas for development, that’s why I support him.”
Ahmed Jejote, a 55-year-old cab driver from Sierra Leone, echoed the sentiment.
“We’ve experienced Eric Adams,” he said, referring to the corruption-plagued current city mayor, who dropped out of the race in September. “We’ve seen Cuomo.”
“Mamdani is just starting out, and he wants to go forward,” he said. “So it’s not really about religion for me”.
Blocks away, 46-year-old Mariam Saleh stood over steaming trays of food at Kumasi Restaurant: banku, a fermented mixture of maize and cassava; suya, a spiced meat skewer; kwenkwen, a type of jollof rice.
She was less circumspect about the historic nature of Mamdani’s run.
“That he is Muslim, for us, is huge progress,” the 46-year-old, who is originally from Ghana, told Al Jazeera.
“It’s huge progress for the Muslim community in America, not just in New York.”
