\tThis is the first episode of a three part series on Zohran Mamdani, the popular and populist democratic socialist mayor of New York, and his ideological predecessor, Fiorello LaGuardia.
\tI’m super interested in making connections between the past and present and that’s the goal of this series. Mamdani and LaGuardia were of different political parties and one is a professed democratic socialist while the other was not however the similarities are stark. In these three episodes, I’ll trace their lives and decisions side by side showing their motivations, reasoning and how the historical context of the time affected their decision making and agendas. This first episode will cover their upbringing, immigrant backgrounds and how xenophobia was rampant 100 years ago when LaGuardia was growing up and still is today.