In Astoria, Queens, an Iftar in Solidarity With Palestine
Last month, socialist NY Assembly member Zohran Mamdani organized a public iftar in his district in Astoria, Queens, calling for a cease-fire in Gaza — a modest attempt to build international solidarity at the most local political level.
Zohran Mamdani speaks before the crowd at an iftar gathering in Astoria, Queens, New York City, on April 2, 2024. (Shah Miraz)
Across New York State on April 2, thousands of people left their Democratic presidential primary ballots blank to pressure President Joe Biden to call for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza. In one neighborhood — Astoria, Queens — that pressure manifested itself at the dinner table, too.
On a Saturday evening in late March, toward the end of Ramadan, socialist New York State Assembly member Zohran Mamdani organized an iftar gathering that demonstrated how Gaza, in this district of about twenty thousand people, is a hyperlocal issue. People made their way home to break their fasts under a “Ramadan Mubarak” twinkle-lights banner strung across the street, as Mamdani greeted guests at the neighborhood Afghan restaurant Sami’s Kabab House.
Mamdani chatted with Freddy Zeideida, known as the “Falafel King,” who’d come to the assemblyman’s iftar straight from work in his own restaurant, wearing his mismatched crocs, T-shirt, and keffiyeh. Bar owners, Democratic Socialists of America members, botanic-garden workers, tenant organizers, museum curators, and three different coffee-shop proprietors were among the crowd who joined them.
Mamdani organized the iftar event in order to show that, in his words, “our solidarity extends beyond our district, it extends to every single person in this world, and that includes Palestinians.”
An Iftar for a Cease-Fire
In this moment, solidarity meant gathering a diverse swath of neighborhood residents together to listen to Astorians with family in Palestine speak. Guests shared a prayer (if so desired), water, dates, and a meal of lamb, dumplings, eggplant, and salad. They spoke of goings-on in the neighborhood — Mamdani held forth on his top three or four favorite coffee shops in walking distance and suggested that everyone at his table check out the recently released Dune 2, though he admitted that because he saw it at 10:30 p.m. during Ramadan, he slept through the second half. He spoke so much he barely ate.
Tarek Ismail, a professor at the CUNY School of Law, spoke of his own child after dinner: Suraya, age one.
“Half of my daughter’s life has been the genocide of her people,” Ismail said. “She has seen more protests in her life than playgrounds.” Ismail wrote some of the language in the Not on Our Dime bill, which Mamdani introduced in May 2023 to grant the state’s attorney general the authority to deny tax-exempt status to nonprofits fundraising for West Bank settler groups. He remembered leading chants about it: “Nakba in my daughter’s time? Not on our dime!”
Those concerns were not theoretical. “For the past six months, the Nakba in my daughter’s time, in Gaza, has been televised. Live-streamed. Broadcasted, for us all to see. All on our dime.” (New York State taxpayers financed an estimated $341 million in aid to Israel this past year.)
What’s happening in Gaza has made its way back to Astoria, which is home to a large portion of New York’s estimated 7,700 Palestinian residents. Some of the small-business owners of Astoria have responded: Kayli Kunkel, owner of zero-waste store Earth and Me, has been selling out of Palestinian soaps, olives, and keffiyehs from the shop Baba’s Olives within a day of restocking them. People who, a few months ago, might have been unwilling to make a public statement on Gaza for fear of business losses, were more than willing to talk about it very openly.
“I want everyone to rest assured there is immense solidarity in Astoria. Speaking up for a permanent cease-fire and an end to the occupation of Palestine would’ve been infinitely more frightening without the collective voices of other businesses in our community,” Kunkel said. Such a decision can have economic repercussions, as has been made clear at other businesses: Ayat, a Palestinian restaurant chain in New York, was beset by thousands of negative reviews earlier this year for including the slogan “From the River to the Sea” on its menu.
Astoria in Solidarity With Palestine
“I think for too long there’s been a sense that if you speak up for Palestine you will suffer — that there is nothing to be gained from it except for moral clarity,” Mamdani said. “I think that what Astoria is showing is that when you stand up for a universal politics, you will be embraced by your neighborhood. What we’re seeing is that the support for Palestinian rights is unabashed, it’s not a secret — when you go to a coffee shop and get your cappuccino and see that they wrote “Free Palestine” in the cappuccino.”
That solidarity would be demonstrated in another way three days later, when New York’s Leave It Blank campaign, inspired by the “uncommitted” movement out of states like Michigan, won 12 percent of Democratic primary votes. Astoria was one of the neighborhoods with the highest percentage of blank ballots in the entire city. In the parts of the neighborhood located in New York’s 14th congressional district, nearly one in four Democratic voters went to their polling place, submitted an entirely blank form, and left. In the 7th congressional district just next door, that number was closer to one in three.
Diana Moreno was one of those Astoria voters. “I walk around my neighborhood, and I see Palestinian-owned businesses. I walk down Steinway, and I see the uncles and aunties who have a direct connection to what’s happening,” said Moreno. That direct impact means, she said, that she may never vote for a mainstream Democrat again — and, unless things change, she’s certainly not voting for Biden. “I cannot bring myself to vote for someone who is dropping bombs on innocent children and materially contributed to the death of tens of thousands of people,” she said.
That idea is not without opposition in Astoria. Mamdani, who has been one of the city’s staunchest legislative supporters of a cease-fire, is being primaried by a lawyer named Steven Beard, who made a large part of his campaign announcement about standing “with Israel in their response to the October 7 terrorist attacks.” (The rest of the announcement focused primarily on policies regarding domestic pets, like the implementation of no-kill shelters in New York State.) Mamdani has been named as a target by sources close to a group of conservative PACs likely to spend millions of dollars to oust pro-Palestinian candidates in New York this year.
Mamdani was first elected in 2020, unseating a four-term incumbent by a margin so narrow it took election officials a week to count the votes. Despite opposition, he’s confident he’ll win again this year. “[Beard is] seeking to set up a contrast between the two of us, and I am quite confident in my neighbors that when faced with the choice of whether or not they believe Palestinians have the same rights as any other people, they will showcase their belief in a universal humanity,” Mamdani said. “People want moral consistency in their politics.”