Mayor Zohran Mamdani celebrated his first 100 days in office with a rally in Maspeth, where Democratic Socialist headliner Sen. Bernie Sanders praised his work. Ostensibly, the event was as much about the mayor as the workers who make the city function, and tickets were offered to employees of all city agencies.
“New York City is the greatest city in the world because of the millions of people who labor tirelessly each and every day to make it so,” Mamdani said. “Nothing is too big for New York City to take on. And over the past 14 weeks, we have proved that there is no task too small either.”
Many of the workers who requested tickets were enthusiastic about Mamdani, wearing the orange and blue colors of his election campaign posters, adorned with stickers and pins from last year’s election.
Moshe Spern stood in contrast with his kippah and reputation as a dissenter who opposed Mamdani’s candidacy and subsequently exposed anti-Israel incidents in public schools, where he serves as a social studies teacher.
“My union endorsed Mamdani, and I held a rally against them. When I saw the invitation in my email, I thought there was no way on earth that I’d be invited to this event. But then I got the invite,” he said.
Feeling ignored by his union, Spern was among the co-founders of United Jewish Teachers, which unsuccessfully fought to have Erev Pesach declared a religious day off. Relying on traditional and social media, the group brought attention to Palestinian flags flying in public schools, anti-Israel material in books, lessons, and exams, and the harassment of Jewish teachers and faculty. He also campaigned against Mamdani’s candidacy, fearing the Mayor would legitimize antisemitism in schools and city policies through anti-Israel stances not applied toward any other country.
“I made a video, and when I got to the event, someone from the mayor’s office asked if I was going to confront the mayor,” he said. “My purpose was to be a voice of reason. Thousands of people in that room were singing his praises and how he’s doing so great. The mainstream media really neglects the story. People died in the winter; he created a new office for combating antisemitism, whose people don’t represent the whole of the Jewish community. Somebody had to be there to speak to the media.”
In contrast to some of Mamdani’s supporters who spent the past year heckling and disrupting previous mayor Eric Adams and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo—who was Mamdani’s closest competitor—Spern stood and listened to the 35-minute speech and then offered his take to local outlets such as ABC 7.
“They gave me a platform to speak,” he said.
Besides antisemitism, Spern criticized Mamdani’s economic policies, such as city-run grocery stores, which he argues would be more expensive to build and operate than a private supermarket.
“The idea of a city-run grocery is a year away; people are still in need, and he miscalculated how much it would cost. A lot could happen until then. He is catering to his crowd and not the 52 percent of New Yorkers who disapprove of him.”
The first announced location of a city-run grocery would be La Marqueta in East Harlem, which is projected to cost $30 million. While earlier reports suggested an opening as early as next year, more recent projections have pushed the date to 2029. The site is hardly a “food desert,” being located only a block away from a private supermarket. On a visit to La Marqueta on Tuesday, Mamdani compared his efforts to 1930s-era mayor Fiorello LaGuardia.
“New York City, it is time for a grand experiment once again,” Mamdani said. “Just as LaGuardia used government to respond to the challenges of the Great Depression, we will use government to respond to rising prices and unaffordable groceries.”
The city’s Jewish-Italian mayor set a precedent by expanding city services in tandem with President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. The difference is that LaGuardia’s city-run markets were built to move pushcart vendors off the streets, while Mamdani’s groceries are replicating an existing product, attempting to reduce the sticker price of an item by subsidizing it—even as private supermarkets already accept food benefit cards.
Mamdani spoke of his work as “sewer socialism” in regard to keeping utilities in good shape, a phrase coined by Morris Hillquit, who earned 22 percent of the vote in his 1917 mayoral run. Another phrase used by Mamdani was “pothole politics,” in reference to work on the city’s streets following the damage caused by multiple snowstorms this past winter. Promotional videos at the event highlighted uniformed city workers in all agencies doing their jobs alongside the smiling mayor.
In that spirit, Spern is proud of his 15 years at the Department of Education, alongside his position as the General Studies principal at the Chofetz Chaim mesivta in Kew Gardens Hills.
As other city workers have affinity groups representing their interests and backgrounds, Spern is coordinating with Jewish groups in Education, Fire, and Police, among other agencies, to speak with unity against antisemitism and discrimination.
“I felt like I accomplished my goal and I did not cause any trouble. I’m still a small fish in a big pond,” he said. When compared to social media personality Lizzy Savetsky, who stages stunts in confronting the city’s progressive policies, Spern noted that his limited presence on social media does not come close to hers, and that the results of his efforts are more important than the visibility of a disruptor at a rally.
“I’m not looking to be a social media star, but I can’t sit back and do nothing. We cannot allow our interests to be overrun while the DSA is in charge.”
By Sergey Kadinsky
