Color Outside the Lines

Hello! Welcome to COTL, a discussion place for BIPOC. Posted the first 3 Wednesdays of the month

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Hey everyone 🤟🏽. Hope y’all are well.

Thought I’d feature a rare positive political win with Zohran Mamdani winning the democratic primary to run for Mayor in November’s general election[footnote]where ~a million independents will vote, but 40% are young?[/footnote] for one of the biggest cities in the world: New York.[footnote]coincidentally a win would make Mamdani another Muslim Mayor of one of the other major western cities: Sadiq Khan being the other in London.[/footnote]

I mentioned him running in a previous thread, but I think there’s a lot to be discussed with him & perhaps more importantly his actual policies.

It’s funny as hell seeing the right wing struggle to choose what to attack Mamdani over 🤣!

His values, his youth, his race, his faith. He’s practically everything they hate & perhaps his greatest sin: he doesn’t believe billionaires should exist 😱. Given his win over New York Political dynasty & former “favourite” disgraced governor Andrew Cuomo (seriously Zohran was polling at 1% when he entered the race 😂), the democratic Party should be seriously asking themselves what the fuck they’ve been doing & which direction they should be going in, because the rich playing both sides (to get massive tax cuts[footnote]sigh at the oncoming nightmare after yesterday’s vote on the big beautiful turd[/footnote]) isn’t working.

A satirical illustration depicting two men at a table with cookies. One man, appearing authoritative and older, points at the younger man and remarks about a 'foreigner' wanting the other's cookie, highlighting themes of division and suspicion.

Zohran calls himself a Democratic Socialist but uses a quote of Dr King’s:

“Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children.”

– Speech to the Negro American Labor Council, 1961.[footnote]An interesting organisation that was disbanded after facing insurmountable legal fees due to being labelled a communist group… Is Zohran a Russian plant? No that would likely be the president of the United States of America[/footnote]

There’s been a lot of flack coming against him mostly due to his ugly belief in bettering the lives of New Yorkers by raising tax on the ultra rich (by a ridiculous 2%[footnote]I mean seriously! What is that? An expensive Cartier watch?! How dare the peasants come for the wealthiests watches![/footnote], stopping rent rises (& preventing communities & real people from being priced out of the city), inequitable taxation on non-white communities (the wording on his website has caught some flack for being racist, but he says just stating facts), running a pilot 5 boroughs superstore scheme (which would replace the gross over spend on providing relief to corporate superstores who give no guarantees of price freezes or hikes) & free buses to help fight cost of living (1 in 5 New Yorkers live in poverty?!), provide better transport, ease congestion & fight climate change. What an awful, awful man 😂.

I’ll cop to watching a lot of his content & videos lately! He’s a smooth operator:

Very slick, but I do love that he kind of features New Yorkers prominently. Makes it feel alive. Also 40,000 volunteers knocking the doors 🙃. Bet Cuomo didn’t have anywhere near as many despite getting $25million from a lot of Trump backers.

He always sticks to message & it’s simple: affordability & doing what’s right for the people of New York.[footnote]or just what’s right – like equal rights for Palestinians & fighting fascist ICE[/footnote] He’s done a great job of staying positive, smiling through most of it all & reasoning out & attacking with evidence against his opponents. I didn’t know Adams had done so much bad shit 🤭🤦🏾‍♀️🙃. Goes to show where the media landscape is at. Speaking of… boy howdy did the media go hard after Mamdani with Israel, because not wanting genocide & ethnic cleansing is apparently a big no no… for the Israeli lobby? I’m guessing (a lot of their money going to democratic politicians like Shumer & Jeffries & Cuomo & presumably independent incumbent Eric Addams). Hell the democratic elders like Bill Clinton came out to stump for Cuomo.

There’s almost a racial tinge to the questioning & a sort of Islamophobia? I have heard some severe racist attacks in a video from his office. He shows a news channel the kind of racist messages he receives (via his phoneline) to his NY State assembly office. It’s vile.

I’ve even seen him breakdown from it in another rarer news segment.

Anyways, apparently Trump wants to deport him because that’s a thing now, as Mamdani was born in Uganda (nevermind naturalisation 🙄). I wonder how New Yorkers will react!

TL;DR: Ugandan Rappers Young Cardamom (Mamdani 🤭) & HAB with their track #1 Spice for the Mira Nair’s 2016 film Queen of Katwe, featuring the awesome Lupita Nyong’o 💃🏾:


Prompt: What would you do if you were in charge? Of everything? Or perhaps for those who have been in charge, how do you deal or have dealt with racist abuse &/or the pressures?

Also open prompt. Feel free to discuss anything you like.