The Rev. Al Sharpton blasted the Islamophobic hate speech peppered all through the town’s race for mayor as Muslim Democratic frontrunner Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani made a marketing campaign cease in Harlem on Saturday, claiming the divisive language will solely pit New Yorkers “against each other.”
“I am outraged at the ugly Islamophobia that has been used in this campaign,” Sharpton instructed members of the Nationwide Motion Community on the Home of Justice in Harlem with Mamdani by his aspect. “To act as though every Muslim is a terrorist and connecting (him) to something as ugly as what happened to us on 9/11 is an insult to the intelligence of all New Yorkers.”
Throughout his speech, Sharpton launched the viewers to Rev. Travis Boyd, the pastor of Sharon Baptist Church within the Bronx. Boyd’s mom was killed within the towers on Sept. 11, 2001, when he was a baby.
“That little boy, who was a victim of 9/11, says that you can’t use my mother’s death as a political prize,” Sharpton mentioned, turning to Boyd.
“Who you gonna vote for Tuesday?” Sharpton requested him.
“Mamdani,” Boyd mentioned to a spherical of applause from the viewers.
The race for mayor — by which Mamdani, a Democratic socialist, is the frontrunner — has been laced with Islamophobic phrases and imagery, the Queens assemblyman and his supporters declare.
Final month, former Gov. Cuomo, who’s working as an unbiased candidate, laughed and appeared to agree when radio persona Sid Rosenberg mentioned that Mamdani could be “cheering” for an additional 9/11.
Mamdani instantly lashed out in opposition to his opponent’s gaffe, saying Cuomo’s objective was to “smear and slander.”
“Don’t play us against each other,” Sharpton warned Saturday because the heated race enters its final three days.
Mamdani mentioned the Islamophobic rhetoric surfacing from supporters of Cuomo and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa was “desperate.”
New York Lawyer Basic Letitia James and Mayoral entrance runner Candidate Zohran Mamdani attend the Seventh Day Adventist Church on Hanson Place in Brooklyn on Saturday Nov. 1, 2025. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Every day Information)
“It is still so unbecoming of a city that we all love and that we call our home,” Mamdani mentioned Saturday. “This kind of naked bigotry and racism is something that many of us have come to expect from Washington, D.C., but to see someone so unabashedly running on that same kind of a vision for this city is the same person who does not know what the people of the city are looking for.”
With three days to go till the following chief of the town is set, Mamdani leads the pack of candidates, though a ballot launched Friday night time exhibits Cuomo catching up.
The Nationwide Motion Community doesn’t endorse political candidates, and Cuomo addressed NAN at its nationwide conference through the marketing campaign. However Sharpton did word that Mamdani was the one mayoral candidate that constantly “showed up” to NAN occasions because the marketing campaign drew on.
“(When) we got down the road, we said, ‘It’s time for us to march on Wall Street.’ Only one candidate showed,” Sharpton mentioned. “When we honored our culture at Lincoln Center just about a month and a half ago, honoring Stephanie Mills and honoring Babyface and others, only one showed. Here we are on Saturday. It’s the Saturday before election day, only one candidate showed up.”
“This is not just a campaign stop,” Sharpton mentioned. “He’s been here.”
Mamdani thanked Sharpton and NAN for taking him “from 1% in the polls to being on the precipice to being the next mayor.”
“You have shown a belief (in me),” he mentioned. “You have shown a faith.”
