New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani supports Palestine at St. Patrick's Day event honouring Mary Robinson

At a St. Patrick's Day breakfast hosted at Gracie Mansion, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani paid tribute to former Irish President Mary Robinson. During his address, Mamdani drew a parallel between Irish history and Palestine.

This breakfast was part of New York City's 256th annual St. Patrick’s Day festivities. Just days prior, Mayor Mamdani had also been invited to speak at a luncheon sponsored by the James Connolly Irish American Labor Coalition by John Samuelson, the head of the Transport Workers Union and a key political supporter.

On Monday, Mamdani was asked if he supported a united Ireland, to which he confessed he hadn’t thought about it enough and then finally said, “When it comes to the future of Ireland, the best people to listen to are the Irish.”

During the morning, Mamdani honoured Mary Robinson at Gracie Mansion, where he drew parallels between Irish history and solidarity with Palestinians. Following this, he attended Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral with Robinson seated prominently beside him. He then participated in the parade.

At the breakfast event, Mamdani presented Robinson with a proclamation, commending her as an exemplar of moral courage and political solidarity. He specifically lauded her dedication to human rights, women’s rights, climate justice, and LGBTQ rights, highlighting her staunch support for Palestinians.

“Over the past few years, as we’ve witnessed a genocide unfold before our eyes, there has been deafening silence from so many, for those who have long cared about universal human rights and the extension of them to Palestinians. Yet former president Robinson has never been silent, not when she was president, not when she was high commissioner for human rights, not in the decades since. As she once said, “commemoration is a moral act". Her solidarity is many things, unwavering, sincere, and chief among them Irish.”

 

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In his speech read aloud during breakfast, which was also posted to his Instagram, Mamdani spoke about Irish resistance and solidarity. Mamdani's speech also referenced the Troubles, the 1981 hunger strikes by republican prisoners in the Maze prison, and the Dunnes Stores strike against apartheid South Africa.

“Irish solidarity is no coincidence as it was on Irish soil that the British empire developed its colonial project,” said Mamdani. “Who can better understand those who weep than those who have wept for so long? Yet the story of Ireland is not merely one of violent oppression or subjugation or attempted domination, it is one of resistance too. For centuries, generation after generation waged a lonely effort for independence. Year after year, uprising after uprising, they were brutally taken back, and still they kept coming.”

“I think of leaders like James Connolly and Patrick Pearse, who roused thousands with demands of political freedom and economic self-determination,” he continued. “ I think of those who endured unimaginable hardship during the troubles, the 10 prisoners who died after going on hunger strike. I think of the many names who have been lost to time who perished from a famine exacerbated by imperial callousness, and I think of the discrimination Irish New Yorkers faced when they first came to these shores. It was Irish hands that built so much of the city we recognize today. If solidarity has so often been withheld from the Irish, it has never been withheld by the Irish."

 

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