Editor's Note: This article was submitted to IrishCentral by Co Louth native Brendan Fay, the founder of St. Pats For All and the Irish LGBT group Lavender and Green Alliance.
We meet at 10 am on the N train platform at Ditmars in the borough of Queens, a reunion of Astoria “Mamdani for Mayor” campaign volunteers. The campaign inspired over 100,000 volunteers across the five boroughs.
I was also among a core group of Irish for Zohran - with our message “Votáil Zohran Mamdani ar son Nua-Eabhrac." John McDonagh became a media star with his appearance with his friend Seth on the campaign digital story with Zohran Mamdani. It went viral from YouTube to CNN.
In Astoria, we knocked on doors, rang the bells, gave out fliers, listened to our neighbors' fears and hopes, and endured a few roars about socialism. We spoke with people coming out of Mass at the Immaculate Conception Church - many are immigrants and welcome the promise of a mayor who is an immigrant himself from Uganda. There were many affordability conversations about free buses, a rent freeze, and child care.
On this New Year's morning, there's excitement among the crowd on the N train – many wearing the yellow hats and buttons. Downtown, near City Hall, thousands are gathering. It's slow-moving, but the spirits are upbeat.
Rocky tells me his story and his decades of working for human rights. He has an enthusiastic affection for the City and this historic day. But he also has a realistic sense of the challenges. He brought food to share with others in the long line.
I learn that Mayor Mamdani gets to City Hall in a yellow taxi driven by Richard Chow. They met four years ago when the new Mayor supported the city taxi owners during their hunger strike campaign. It was a time of debt and suicides. Today is a joyful reunion!
Yellow cab driver Richard Chow was on hunger strike for medallion debt relief with Zohran Mamdani a little over four years ago.
Today, he drove now Mayor Zohran Mamdani to City Hall for his inauguration in his taxi. pic.twitter.com/aJyKHBvjjw
— Annie McDonough (@Annie_McDonough) January 1, 2026
New Year's Day 2026, the inauguration ceremony for Mayor Mamdani, marks a new day dawning. There's a spirit of defiant joy! Light breaking in the clouds that have depressingly overshadowed life, especially for immigrants, during these past months and years. We are participating in the history-making of a new era for political life.
We celebrate Mayor Mamdani - immigrant, Muslim, democratic socialist, visionary political leader of a new generation. We celebrate the hard yet joyful struggle for this historic inauguration day in New York! Many begrudgers said it was unimaginable, impossible, and unrealistic!
Yet here we are with hope rising, not just for the 8 and a half million in New York, but across the country and world. Change is possible. There is no going back.
A campaign of “courage over fear” is how Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York's 14th Congressional District describes the Mamdani road to City Hall.
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Surrounded by faith community leaders of New York churches, mosques, and synagogues, Imam Khalid Latif, Muslim chaplain, says Mayor Mamdani was “bold enough to run and brave enough to win.”
Broadway legend Mandy Patinkin, with the PS22 Chorus of Staten Island, lead the singing of Somewhere over the Rainbow and we all sing with heartfelt gusto the final line: “Why oh why can’t we?"
After Senator Bernie Sanders introduces and administers the oath, Mayor Mamdani speaks to us: “If you are a New Yorker, I am your mayor.
“Regardless of whether we agree, I will protect you, celebrate with you, mourn alongside you, and never, not for a second, hide from you.”
From the steps of City Hall, he speaks of human rights – of worker rights – of a New York for all and not the few. A city of hopes and dreams, “with liberty and justice for all."
He says: “Over the years to come, my administration will resurrect that legacy. City Hall will deliver an agenda of safety, affordability, and abundance—where government looks and lives like the people it represents, never flinches in the fight against corporate greed, and refuses to cower before challenges that others have deemed too complicated.
"In so doing, we will provide our own answer to that age-old question—who does New York belong to? Well, my friends, we can look to Madiba and the South African Freedom Charter: New York 'belongs to all who live in it.'
"Together, we will tell a new story of our city.”
A beautiful moment was the rendition of "Bread and Roses," anthem of the women’s movement, sung by Lucy Dacus:
As we go marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women’s children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread but give us roses.
I get texts and calls from family and friends in Ireland, Poland, and Mexico, feeling and celebrating the New York resilient spirit of hope rising again with the “lady in the Harbor” from New York on this New Year's Day 2026.
A French TV reporter asks me what the day means in a few words: “I’m an immigrant from Ireland living in Astoria with my spouse, Tom.
“Week after week, I say, we New Yorkers have been on the streets protesting and rising for democracy, for immigrant rights, for nuclear disarmament, for NO KINGS, for housing and healthcare, for bread not bombs in Gaza, for America.
"But today, on this New Year's Day, we are on Broadway in our thousands in below freezing temps, celebrating the rising of the people, the power of people, the power of democracy.
"Today is a new day of hope, hope for New York, for America, and the world.”
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