A mayor speech is a seven to nine minute persuasive speech where a city’s elected leader highlights challenges facing the community and calls on citizens to help solve them. Generally, mayors are elected directly through a local election or appointed by council and are styled His or Her Worship whilst in office. Across America, more mayors are using their speeches to highlight efforts to increase civic engagement, boost financial stability for residents and address national issues that impact their cities such as blight, homelessness and climate change.
Mr Mamdani’s speech struck a chord with many in the Muslim community, said Bilqees Akhtar, a 56-year-old school administrator from Richmond Hill, Queens who practices Islam and has faced slurs and discrimination for wearing her headscarf. “He addressed the blatant anti-Muslim animus that we experience on a daily basis,” she said.
But the effect of his speech extended far beyond New York’s heavily Muslim boroughs. In Oklahoma City, engineer Hamza Khan said Mr Mamdani’s candidacy has emboldened more Muslims to run for local and state offices. In Brooklyn, Zein Rimawi, an owner of a home care center who volunteered for Mr Mamdani, said the speech was especially meaningful to her generation of young Muslims, which has grown up since after the Sept. 11 attacks and has experienced the same kind of prejudice that other groups have endured.