Mamdani Found Room for Little Palestine and Little Yemen — But Had No Space for Little Italy

“This is cultural erasure,” said Mike Crispi, President of the Italian American Civil Rights League, in a statement. “Little Italy is sacred ground. It is where Italian immigrants came with nothing, worked like hell, opened shops, raised families, built churches, fed the city, and helped make New York what it is.”

“Mamdani’s City Hall can find room for every fashionable progressive constituency, but somehow it cannot find Little Italy,” Crispi added. “Our culture is good enough for their photo ops, our food is good enough for their fundraisers, and our neighborhoods are good enough for tourism dollars — but when it comes time to recognize Italian Americans, they erase us.”

That is a devastating sentence. And it’s completely accurate.

This isn’t a clerical error. This is a pattern. Mamdani skipped the Israel Day Parade. He’s been openly hostile to law enforcement and immigration enforcement while celebrating communities that progressive activists have decided deserve official recognition. And in June 2020, he posted a photo of himself flipping off the Columbus statue in Astoria with the caption “Take it down.” The man’s feelings about Italian American heritage aren’t exactly a mystery.