NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani skips Columbus Day Parade, offers Italian Heritage Month video instead – CBS News

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani skips Columbus Day Parade, offers Italian Heritage Month video instead  CBS News

Mayor Zohran Mamdani didn't march in Monday's Columbus Day Parade​, opening himself up to the same criticism he received after skipping the Israel Day Parade on Fifth​ back on May 31. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani didn't march in Monday's Columbus Day Parade, opening himself up to the same criticism he received after skipping the Israel Day Parade on Fifth back on May 31. For some reason, politics is always on parade at the annual festivities celebrating Italian-American heritage. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio marched, but was frequently booed because of the controversy over the Christopher Columbus statue. There was no booing this year because there was no mayor, but Mamdani did choose a special way to remember the contributions of Italian Americans.

He avoided the controversy of whether to celebrate Columbus Day or Indigenous Peoples Day by issuing a video for Italian Heritage Month, and celebrating the work of someone he could identify with, Vito Marcantonio, a left-of-center progressive politician who served seven terms in Congress representing East Harlem, from 1935 to 1951, mostly as a member of the American Labor Party. "Proof that a different form of politics was not only possible, but popular, Vito Marcantonio's politics were based around the idea, radical at the time, that the working class had the same material interests regardless of