Every Friday I’m going to be posting a short note like this highlighting something I’ve read in the last week that I’d recommend. You can read the last one here
Last week I was struck by a clip of NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani responding to a heckler. Corey Robin wrote an article for Jacobin crisply summarizing key lessons:
Notice the four things Mamdani is doing.
First, he remains unflappable, gracious, calm, and funny.
Second, he doesn’t treat the heckler as a crazy or an enemy, as a problem to be managed or an alien to be tossed out. He treats the heckler for what he presumably is, a fellow New Yorker.
Third, not only does Mamdani pivot immediately to the issue he cares most about, affordability, but he turns the very fact of the man’s heckling into the issue he cares most about.
Last, Mamdani artfully points out that one of the main ways in which speech is stifled in a capitalist society is economics. If you can’t afford to live in New York, if you can’t afford to travel to New York, you can’t speak in New York.
This is all very well-said. I was nodding along in enthusiastic agreement even before Robin related the last point to a classic essay by the philosopher I recently called “the patron saint of this Substack.”
Read the rest of Robin’s article “Study How Zohran Mamdani Handles This Heckler” here.
Thanks for reading Philosophy for the People w/Ben Burgis! This post is public so feel free to share it.
If you want to check out my own writing outside of this Substack in the last week, check out my article in Jacobin:
The No Kings Protests Are Cause for Hope
Also, while I’ve got your attention, J. Andrew World is a crazily talented graphic artist who makes all the images for both this Substack and my show. He’s also made art for other shows, and very often makes album covers and posters for bands (in other words, like me, like a lot of us, he’s stringing together a bunch of part-time gigs), and outside of that paying work he does a lot of artwork for his local DSA. His computer broke recently, and he’s been doing what he can without it, but there’s a lot he can’t do until he gets this taken care of, and he’s been having to turn down gigs. He started a GoFundMe to help him buy a new one so he can fully get back into the swing of doing what he does best, and last I checked he’s just over halfway there. Consider chipping in!
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