I did not want to like this. But I was charmed, even moved, by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s visit to Rikers Island on Wednesday to watch the World Cup.The young mayor strode coolly through the inmate complex, shaking hands with rough-looking prisoners in tan jumpsuits and flashing his good-natured smile. He eventually pulled up at a table of inmates, sleeves rolled to his elbows, and talked soccer.“Who are you guys rooting for?” he asked, taking the tally of the table.
The inmates, a select group of 100 who earned the privilege through good behavior, beamed back at him, enjoying the good fortune of the mayor’s company and the dignity that came with it.“They, too, are a part of New York City,” Mamdani later told a reporter. “The World Cup has been a magical moment for the entire city. These are New Yorkers, and they will be New Yorkers when they get out of Rikers. I wanted to make sure we could celebrate this moment together.”None of this excuses or ignores the fact that Mamdani is abysmal on crime. His socialist instincts have been mostly thwarted so far by Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, but his stated aims remain intact. He still vows to defund traditional policing in favor of unarmed crisis responders. He still uses anti-incarceration and anti-police rhetoric, framing the problem of crime as one of policing itself rather than of criminals.In his view, the inmates in tan jumpsuits are primarily victims of the justice system, not perpetrators.
