'Liberation coming to City Hall': Thousands brave freezing temperature to welcome Mamdani as New York City mayor Submitted by Maysa Mustafa on Thu, 01/01/2026 - 17:35 Attendees clutch hand warmers and Palestinian keffiyehs for Mamdani's City Hall swearing-in ceremony New York mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani is sworn in on 1 January 2026 in New York (Amir Hamja / POOL / AFP) Off Thousands of New Yorkers braved freezing temperatures and long lines on New Year's day 2026 to welcome Zohran Mamdani in as the city's first Muslim mayor on Thursday. New York's City Hall and Broadway in Lower Manhattan were awash with blue and yellow Zohran beanie hats, while 90's R&B music blared from speakers. Many attendees were clutching hand-warmers alongside Palestinian keffiyehs. Some held back sniffles as they endured the cold temperatures. For Asad Dandia, coming out in the cold on New Year's day was well worth it, after he supported Mamdani's upset mayoral campaign as an informal adviser. "It's insane we are going to have a Muslim guy in command of City Hall," Dandia told Middle East Eye. "Islamaphobia, anti-Muslim bigotry [and] anti-Arab bigotry lost and we won." Dandia said that Mamdani has "set the bar high" to succeed but he was committed to the new mayor he had come to work with when he was a little-known state assemblyman. "New Yorkers are not supposed to like their mayor. This is a new thing for me… for the first time, we can actually say we love the mayor," he added. 'A mayor we can love' The City Hall event is Mamdani's second swearing-in ceremony. After the clocks struck midnight, bringing in 2026, Mamdani took his first oath of office at an abandoned subway stop. He used his grandfather's Quran and a 200-year-old copy of the Quran on loan from the New York Public Library at the private ceremony that had just a handful of attendees. Mamdani's wife, the artist Rama Duwaji, held out the copies of the Qurans from which Mamdani took his oath of office. Also in attendance at the midnight ceremony was Eric Adams, his predecessor, who served a single term as mayor and was known for his frequent visits to and defence of Israel . There were 4,000 tickets to the City Hall event and a neighbouring block party was set up to accommodate another 40,000 spectators, who watched Mamdani's second swearing in on large screens. The party was held adjacent to City Hall along seven blocks in Lower Manhattan between Murray and Liberty Streets. Zohran Mamdani sworn in as first Muslim mayor of New York City Read More » The 34-year-old, who is also New York's first mayor of South Asian descent and the first to be born in Africa, is among only a handful of US politicians to be sworn in on the Quran. Mamdani's faith and his ethnic background were front and centre during his campaign, where he focused on celebrating the diversity of New York. In several social media videos, Mamdani spoke about the effects of the 9/11 attacks on New York and the subsequent rise in Islamophobia. Other videos featured the experiences of everyday New Yorkers, including many of its Muslim and immigrant communities. During the campaign trail, he ran an avowedly leftwing campaign, mobilising thousands of volunteers, where he promised rent control and free bus travel - a platform funded by a proposed increase in taxes on the wealthiest residents of New York City. He was also unapologetically pro- Palestine in a city that was convulsed by protests against Israel's war on Gaza . "It's all at once believable and unbelievable," Abby Stein, a transgender activist rabbi who supported Mamdani, told MEE. "It almost feels like a shock. But at the same time this was a long time coming," Stein said. "Everyone around us was not just telling us we didn't stand a chance… the media didn't even want to cover the campaign launch." Stein was one of tens of thousands of Jewish-American New Yorkers who supported Mamdani's campaign and voiced solidarity with Palestinians amid Israel's genocidal war on Gaza. "We had thousands of Jews knocking on hundreds of thousands of doors… we got hundreds of thousands of Jews who voted for the first Muslim mayor, for the first immigrant mayor in decades," she said. "We believe Palestinian liberation is what will help us in the battle against antisemitism, in the battle against Islamophobia," she said, adding that a "vision of true liberation" was coming to City Hall. US Politics New York City News Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:19 Update Date Override 0