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How Zohran Mamdani’s 2021 hunger strike for NYC taxi drivers shaped his political journey
Zohran Mamdani’s hunger strike alongside New York taxi drivers in 2021 marked the early moment he embraced cause-based politics.
Zohran Mamdani’s path to City Hall did not begin with campaign rallies. It started in the streets. In late 2021, when New York City taxi drivers were holding vigils and hunger strikes to protest crushing medallion debt, Mamdani was there.
He had just started his first term in Albany. He was 29. He would go on to starve himself for nearly two weeks in front of City Hall, insisting that the protest “make the consequences of policy public.”
During the 2021 hunger strike, he spoke about “people who have ruined their bodies for the city.” As per The Guardian, he broke his fast after consuming only water, Gatorade, and eventually broth, it was with two slices of avocado and a date. He said he was exhausted. But he also said the act had meaning: a tactic that made suffering visible.
How a hunger strike in 2021 paved the way for Zohran Mamdani
That memory resurfaced this week, after New York elected Mamdani its 111th mayor. The Associated Press called the race within 35 minutes of polls closing.
The result marked a generational and ideological shift in the country’s largest city. Mamdani defeated former Governor Andrew Cuomo, overcoming a wall of establishment donors and super PACs.
Zohran Mamdani’s coalition
The win reflected a new bloc in New York politics. Younger voters. Working-class immigrant communities in Queens. But also, compared with the June primary, deeper support in Black and Latino neighborhoods, per the New York Times. Many of the same taxi workers who once stood beside him during the hunger strike canvassed for him this fall.
His advocacy on behalf of Palestinian causes has followed a similar arc. Mamdani often frames the issue through solidarity with workers, displacement, and state power.
Also read: Zohran Mamdani’s first Instagram post after NYC mayoral win has no caption
What supporters say about Mamdani
Supporters describe it as consistent with his cab-driver campaign, rent justice pushes, and housing organizing in Astoria. Critics have accused him of polarizing the office he will soon hold.
Mamdani has said that politics did not come from ideological theory alone. It came from proximity. Watching migrant labor, debt, precarity, and protest shape neighborhoods like his own.
Now, as a mayor, those same questions return on a larger stage. The hunger strike sits in the background as a record. A signal of what confrontation might look like from City Hall.
FAQs
Who is Zohran Mamdani?
Zohran Mamdani is a Queens-based organizer-turned-lawmaker, recently elected as New York’s 111th mayor.
Why did Mamdani go on a hunger strike in 2021?
He joined NYC taxi drivers protesting medallion debt, aiming to pressure policymakers for relief.
How is the hunger strike connected to his politics now?
Supporters see it as part of a broader pattern of cause-driven, solidarity-focused politics.
