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A little more than four years ago, Zohran Mamdani announced from a lectern in Manhattan’s City Hall Park that he was about to go on hunger strike. He hoped that, by doing so, he would push politicians to provide debt relief for New York City cab drivers. “I will be on strike for as long as it takes,” Mamdani said. “We are going to be moving all of my meetings. All of my calls. All of my office duties. I will be taking them from this protest site.”
As I stood in the park that day, it wasn’t clear just how long “as long as it takes” might mean. Or if it would be enough at all. Mamdani had been an Assemblymember representing Astoria, Queens, for less than a year at that point. Fresh off a birthday, he was only three days clear of his twenties…