New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani punctuated his St. Patrick’s Day celebrations not with a pint of Guinness, but a history lesson celebrating the strains of solidarity and resistance that have so long defined the gorgeous and proud nation of Ireland.
Mamdani shared a video on Tuesday that opened with a quote from a letter St. Patrick wrote in the Fifth Century, asking the soldiers of a British warlord to stop devastating his country. “All I can do is what is written: ‘Weep with those who weep.’” Mamdani then added: “It is no small act to weep with those who weep. It is a choice, one that many do not make. It requires sacrifice, a subjugation of the self, solidarity.”
The mayor went on to praise the resilience of the Irish, who have been subjugated to centuries of British colonial rule. “Who can better understand those who weep than those who have wept for so long?” Mamdani said, before noting that the story of Ireland “is not merely one of violent oppression, of subjugation, of attempted domination. It is one of resistance, too.”
Mamdani name-checked prominent leaders in the Irish independence movement like James Connolly and Patrick Pearse, as well as the 10 prisoners who died after going on a hunger strike during the Troubles. He also spoke of Irish immigrants who faced extreme prejudice upon arriving in New York City, but “helped build so much of the city that we recognize today,” and “organized, mobilized, and formed labor movements that endure to this day.”
In closing his message, Mamdani said, “If solidarity has so often been withheld from the Irish, it has never been withheld by the Irish.” He praised the Irish diplomat Roger Casement, who helped expose Belgium’s brutal colonial regime in the Congo Free State; the Dublin supermarket workers whose protest against apartheid South Africa led to a government ban on imports from that country; and Ireland’s 1980 recognition of calls for a Palestinian state.
“Today, as we celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, I know there are many who feel a continued obligation to one another, to a world where justice does not feel so often like the exception, and to all those who still weep,” Mamdani said.
Mamdani’s impassioned and thorough video notably dropped one day after the usually outspoken mayor dodged a reporter’s question on Irish unification. (Northern Ireland remains a separate country that is part of the United Kingdom.) Though one would assume Mamdani would be all for it based on his larger political worldview, the mayor said he had “not thought a lot about” the issue.
Asked again a day later during the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, Mamdani wasn’t exactly shouting “26 + 6 = 1” (a reference to the 26 counties of Ireland, and the six of Northern Ireland, existing as one country), but he did say: “As someone who believes deeply in the principle of self-determination, I think that should also be extended to the Irish.”
Funnily enough, it was on this very issue that New York’s more centrist governor, Kathy Hochul, managed to outflank Mamdani from the left for once. Asked if she supported a united Ireland at the parade, the governor declared, “Indeed, I do!”
