After New York City’s race for mayor catapulted Zohran Mamdani from state assembly member into one of the world’s most prominent progressive voices, intense debate swirled over the ideas at the heart of his campaign.
His critics and opponents painted pledges such as free bus service, universal child care and rent freezes as unworkable, unrealistic and exorbitantly expensive.
But some have hit back, highlighting the quirk of geography that underpins some of this view. “He promised things that Europeans take for granted, but Americans are told are impossible,” said Dutch environmentalist and former government advisor Alexander Verbeek in the wake of Tuesday’s election.
Verbeek backed this with a comment he had overheard in an Oslo café, in which Mamdani was described as an American politician who “finally” sounded normal.
I was in Brussels recently and learned that the subway there is basically free as seemingly all stations have broken gates 🤭
But jokes aside, I was indeed a little bit shocked about the state of Brussels coming from Switzerland 😅 so much broken infrastructure, so much unused real estate (like fenced in but nothing done with it), so much waste and so many empty giant laughing gas bottles…
Maybe I was just in the wrong sector, but damn… Never have seen something like this, and this is where main politics of EU takes place…