Mamdani backs AOC on ‘Woke 1’: ‘What you believe can change’

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Wednesday followed the lead of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in distancing himself from left-wing positions that trended among progressives at the start of the decade.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests that marked 2020, many Democrats espoused left-wing views on race, defunding the police, censorship, lockdowns, vaccines, and other positions. In the years since, some progressives, including Mamdani, Ocasio-Cortez, and former Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong, have backpedaled on some of those positions following accusations from Republicans that the “woke” policies are out of touch with mainstream voters.

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“Look, I think that each person has a responsibility to tell New Yorkers, to tell Americans when they’re running for office what they believe, and sometimes what you believe can change, can develop, it can grow,” the mayor told reporters.

“I’ve made very clear that I do not believe in defunding the police, that I will not be defunding the police, and that to me, delivering critical public safety also looks like working with our police department alongside many other partners,” Mamdani added.

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In 2020, Mamdani wrote that his support for the “defund the police” movement was a “feminist issue,” saying that “especially trans women are disproportionately impacted by police violence & the violence of incarceration.” The same year, he argued that “queer liberation means defund the police.”

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“We’re not Right versus Left or Republican versus Democrat. We’re literally capitalist versus communist — and that’s terrifying,” Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) told USA Today earlier this week in comments weighing in on Hong’s 2020 support for abolishing Thanksgiving and other controversial positions.

(*) Full article: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/house/4685646/mamdani-aoc-woke-1-2020-defund-the-police/