United States | News & Politics

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6440713

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani released a campaign ad this week honoring transgender trailblazers in the city and vowing to make New York City a sanctuary for trans people.

The ad marks a notable departure from the Democratic Party’s current tone on trans rights. Since the party’s 2024 presidential loss to Donald Trump, strategists have increasingly peddled the myth that support for transgender people is a liability for candidates — a notion that Mamdani appears to reject.

In the campaign ad, Mamdani sits behind a large desk near the Christopher Street Pier, where many Black and Latinx unhoused LGBTQ people sought refuge in the 1970s after being pushed to the margins of the city. In the background of the ad is the song “It’s Okay to Cry” by legendary transgender artist SOPHIE.

Mamdani tells the story of Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, trans activists who led the Stonewall Inn uprisings of 1969 and laid the foundation for the city’s first Pride celebration. The Christopher Street pier is “a place of immense contradictions,” he says— just like New York City itself.

“It’s where outsiders found belonging, and it’s also where Marsha P. Johnson’s body was found, the victim of a suspected murder no one was ever prosecuted for,” he says.

As a result of the “cruelty” Rivera faced, Mamadani says, she developed a substance use problem and often faced homelessness. But despite these challenges, Rivera continued her fight for trans liberation, even when many in the mainstream gay rights movement at the time sought to exclude trans people.

Citing Rivera and Johnson’s struggle for equality and recognition, Mamdani says, “We can chart a clear path forward that makes our city inclusive.”

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