Graduation day at Maywood Academy High, where students are 98% Latino; 100% All-American

The soon-to-be Maywood Academy High School graduates processed, beaming, into an auditorium at East Los Angeles College to a recording of Pomp and Circumstance.
The crowd pledged allegiance to the flag. The name of each student joining the U.S. armed forces was read aloud to applause. Cheers erupted when the student singing the national anthem hit extra high notes for "the rockets red glare" and "land of the free."
The vocalist, senior Maria Llamas, who also served as ceremony co-host, spoke in Spanish while her counterpart spoke in English. Noisemakers and shouts greeted the announcement of each graduate's name. And, those assembled cheered for more than 10 seconds after L.A. schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho described the tableau before him:
"From where I stand you are a perfect pixelation of America: the Black, the brown, the Christian, the Muslim, the native-born, and yes, the powerful immigrant."
The Maywood Academy commencement took place in a college that has long been a center of Latino community activism — and which, like the academy, sits in a zone where immigration agents are raiding work places and public spaces, seizing people suspected of living in the U.S. without legal authorization as well as some whose immigration reviews are pending.
Valedictorian Abella Gutierrez captured the duality of so many of the graduations that have taken place all week in the nation's second-largest school district — joy tempered with an undercurrent of fear.
Read more: All of L.A. is not a 'war zone.' We separate facts from spin and disinformation amid immigration raids
"A lot of our class is very optimistic and humorous, and I feel pride knowing that I'm part of that, knowing that I'm making history here," said Abella, who will be attending UCLA and intends to major in architecture. "So, yeah, I'm grateful. I'm happy."
At the same time, "I'm very upset when it comes to the situations that have been happening at the moment," she said, referring to raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE that touched off a week of chaotic, sporadically violent protests in parts of downtown.
"It's a scar on our community, knowing that a lot of our parents and families have to worry about whether they'll be able to participate in this event, because their safety is jeopardized."
"It's hard," said salutatorian Mayah Flores, who plans to attend Cal State Long Beach as a liberal studies major, and then return to Maywood Academy as a teacher. "I feel like I should feel guilty for being so happy during such a trying time for people."
The concerns are not theoretical. Two teachers at the school confirmed to The Times that immigration agents arrested a 10th grader, her younger sister and their mother and took them to a detention facility in Texas.
The arrest did not take place at the school — there are no such reported instances to date of agents entering a campus in Los Angeles County — although there were two unsuccessful attempts in April. Instead, the mother had been seized when she was reporting in to authorities as part of the family's application for asylum, according to advocates for the family, which is from Guatemala.
"Johanna is the top student of the 10th grade at Maywood Academy High School, is an athlete on the swim team, and participates in the Hiking Club," according to a gofundme page set up for the family. "She is a valuable member of the school community. We are asking for her and her family to be reunited with her sister and return home to our community."
Although the auditorium, with a capacity of about 2,000, was mostly full to urge on the 230 graduates, some relatives stayed home.
After the graduation, one senior said in an interview that his father did not attend over fears that he might be taken into custody by immigration agents.
Social studies teacher Cherie McKernan said she gets messages from students "who are very afraid that their parents will be deported. One of the students in this line sent me a message saying that ICE was literally two stores down from where her parents work. So, it has been terrifying, very personal and horrifying to be involved. I feel like we're right in the middle of it."
Read more: Immigration raids have shaken communities across Los Angeles County. How can you help?
"I apologize," Carvalho told the graduates, "for the world you are inheriting is not a perfect world. The society we are bequeathing to you is not a perfect society. My generation and previous generations have not erased poverty, racism, oppression, depression. We have not addressed climate change. We have not dignified everyone in this land despite the words we use or the protections of our Constitution."
Carvalho seemed to be talking about Trump as he continued: "For those who criticize and demonize the immigrant, I want him to know what an immigrant looks like. I want him to know what an undocumented immigrant looks like."
"They're looking at me," he said, referring to his own arrival in the U.S. as an unauthorized teenager from Portugal.
Yet despite the ominous underpinning, people were determined to be festive, upbeat.
"I feel accomplished — hard work and dedication put into this, and now it's just on to the next level," said Adrian Abril. "I'm planning to go to Cal State Fullerton, and major in computer engineering."
There also was the more traditional kind of nervousness.
"I'm not gonna lie. It's scary," said Sadie Padilla. "Because you lived your whole life, elementary school to high school, everything done for you. Now, it's like, you gotta figure stuff out yourself and just have to see where that takes you."
"No matter what is going on," said McKernan, the social studies teacher, "they have triumphed, in this time, to graduate from high school — most of them the first graduates in their families. Their families moved here for this reason, and here they are succeeding beyond their wildest dreams and going off to college."
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

The Hill

6 hours ago

• The Hill

Good news: We've already been king-free for 810 years. But there's also bad news.

Resistance to tyranny, suspicion of concentrated power, and a firm belief in the democratic ideals that birthed this republic. It's a noble struggle. But for all their passion and theatrical flair, the historical literacy behind the 'No Kings Since 1776' slogan leaves much to be desired. In fact, the protestors missed the mark by several centuries. Yes, the U.S. declared independence from the British Crown in 1776. But the kind of 'king' these protesters seem to fear had already ceased to exist in Britain long before that. By the time George III ascended the throne, British kings were largely figureheads, bound by constitutional limits and dependent on Parliament to govern. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 had already drastically curtailed the powers of the monarchy. And indeed, if you want to pinpoint when monarchs lost their teeth, you need to look even further back, to 1215, when rebellious English barons forced King John to sign the Magna Carta. That document didn't create democracy, but it did begin a centuries-long process of transferring power away from the crown and into the hands of parliaments and assemblies. So, by the time the American colonies revolted, they were not really rising up against a tyrannical king, but against an unresponsive and overreaching Parliament. The rallying cry of the American Revolution — 'No taxation without representation' — wasn't an anti-monarchist slogan. It was an anti-parliamentarian slogan. The colonists didn't object to authority per se — they objected to being taxed and ruled by a body in which they had no voice. And they weren't demanding the abolition of kingship. They were demanding accountability, proportionality, and representation. They were asking for a seat at the table. Fast-forward to today, and that slogan might resonate more than ever. We don't live under a king, but we do live under a political system that often behaves as if it's immune to public influence. Our Congress — designed to be the voice of the people and a check on executive power — is frequently in lockstep with the president, regardless of which party is in office. Whether through partisan loyalty or political cowardice, our legislators often abdicate their role as a balancing force. They don't deliberate. They defer. They don't question. They rubber-stamp. The real issue isn't kingship but representation. And in the absence of real legislative independence, the presidency has become more monarchical than anything George III ever imagined. And this didn't start in 2025 or even in 2017. Every American president in modern history has wielded powers the British monarch couldn't have dreamed of: Executive orders, foreign military interventions without Congressional approval, surveillance regimes, and massive influence over the national budget. If protesters truly want to challenge creeping authoritarianism, the more accurate message would be: 'No taxation without genuine representation.' That would strike at the heart of the issue. If Congress does not act independently, if it does not reflect the interests and concerns of the people, then we are not truly being represented. And if we are not being represented, then why are we funding the machine? Of course, no one is seriously proposing that Americans stop paying taxes overnight. Civil disobedience has its limits. But protest must have a point, and slogans must have meaning. A movement that aims to hold power accountable must aim at the right target. 'No Kings' is, at best, historically inaccurate, and at worst, a distraction from the deeply rooted, troubling democratic predicament in which we find ourselves. A government system that would have the Founding Fathers turning in their graves. Imagine if all that energy, creativity, and public spirit were channeled instead into a campaign to restore Congressional independence, to demand term limits, to break the iron grip of lobbyists, to push for electoral reform, or to hold legislators to account for every vote they cast. That would be a revolution worth marching for. So, to the protesters in the streets: your instincts are right. Power must be kept in check. But your history is off, and your slogan is weak. Don't fear a king who never ruled you. Fear a Congress that no longer represents you. Daniel Friedman is professor of political science at Touro University.

Politico

8 hours ago

• Politico

Why the New York Mayor's Race Matters

NEW YORK — How on earth are voters in America's largest city choosing between a 33-year-old socialist and a sex pest for mayor? OK, that's a bit unfair: Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani would be 34 by the time he'd be sworn in to lead New York City. But seriously, these are the choices Democrats here have before them when they go to the polls Tuesday in the most revealing primary election since the party's debacle last year. There's Mamdani, a proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America by way of a noted workers' paradise, Bowdoin, who's calling for city-owned grocery stores and offending the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum by trying to rationalize calls to 'globalize the intifada.' Then there's former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who was forced out of office less than four years ago after multiple women accused him of sexual harassment, now says he regrets resigning and has expressed little contrition about his personal conduct or his deadly mishandling of Covid-19. Cuomo is despised by much of the city, including some of his biggest benefactors, and is the favorite to win. Oh, and if either Mamdani or Cuomo falls short in New York's ranked-choice Democratic primary, each already has secured a separate ballot line in the general election; if they win, they'll get to use it in addition to the Democratic party line, and if they lose, they'll still get the chance to run as independents. Neither ruled out remaining in the race when I asked them if they'd run on a third-party line this fall. Mayor Eric Adams, who avoided corruption charges after cozying up to the Trump administration in an apparent arrangement that would have some Philly ward bosses blush, will also be on the ballot on his own line. The Republican standard bearer is Guardian Angels leader Curtis Sliwa, who was wearing a red hat (beret, to be exact) before it was cool and is ageless in that Dick Clark sort of way. It doesn't quite portend a replay of John Lindsay jousting with Abe Beame and William F. Buckley Jr. in 1965. However, the outcome should not be minimized. Suburban moderate women with national security experience were handily nominated this month to lead the Democratic ticket in state races this year in Virginia and New Jersey, which may itself say something about the appetite of the party's primary voters. But in New York, there is a real internecine clash — and it carries profound implications. Can a young leftist appeal to the party's traditional base of older Black voters? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is watching. Has the backlash to so-called wokeness that sanitized Trump last year reached into Democratic ranks so voters will reluctantly vote for the S.O.B.-we-know? And would Cuomo take such support as a vote of confidence and quickly begin running for president himself in 2028? He repeatedly refused to rule out such a run when I asked him. This being New York, it's not exactly difficult to find voters exasperated with their choices or shy about articulating their frustrations. Including in front of the candidates themselves. Last Sunday afternoon, walking up a closed-to-traffic Columbus Avenue on the Upper West Side, I came across city comptroller Brad Lander, who's polling in third place in the mayor's race. Lander — an affable, middle-aged official fittingly called 'Dad Lander' by his 20-something daughter — was passing out his brochures to shoppers strolling through the streetside market. It was one of those great moments of municipal politics serendipity — running into a candidate in the wild — and I used the opportunity to ask Lander why New Yorkers were left with two options so many found wanting. 'What I'm doing is presenting an option which is neither of those,' Lander began before a voice beside us interjected. 'I wish you or Scott Stringer had actually run as a moderate Democrat instead of trying to be all things to all people,' said the voice, carrying an unmistakable New York accent and citing another lagging candidate. 'Because the last thing this country needs is the left wing of the party dragging us down again and electing people like Trump.' The voter's name was Robert, he wouldn't offer his last name, and he wasn't finished. 'If you'd actually run as a moderate, you'd be the top of my ticket,' he told Lander, explaining: 'I'd rather have an asshole than a progressive.' In what may have been one of the most dutiful and unnecessary follow-ups in my career, I confirmed that, yes, Robert did have Cuomo in mind when he cited 'an asshole.' Lander was patient, arguing that he doesn't think it's wishy-washy 'to want government to run better and to be ambitious about what it can deliver.' Robert became friendlier and presented a peace offering by way of vowing to still rank Lander. Then I asked Lander directly, well, are you a progressive or a moderate? 'See, he won't answer the question!' Robert butted in before Lander could even respond. The candidate called himself 'a pragmatic progressive,' which prompted Robert to walk away. The Upper West Sider said he was a committed Democrat and retired lawyer who also worked in IT and finance, but he was more interested in venting his frustrations than discussing himself. In short: He's 'really pissed off' at MAGA and progressives, the latter, he said, for paving Trump's return. Which gets to the heart of the frustration so many New Yorkers have, not just over this race but from the long shadow of 2024. Moderates believe the party's drift to the left on culture and identity doomed them last year, and progressives can't believe Democrats haven't learned from ceding populism to the right. Yet just as the party sleepwalked into Armageddon by not speaking up about Joe Biden sooner, New York Democrats find themselves with a stark choice today as much as through omission as commission. Most major institutions have either remained silent or enabled Cuomo's comeback. That starts with elected officials who disdain him, most significantly Gov. Kathy Hochul and Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand. The silence of Schumer, his party's Senate leader and a New York senator for more than a quarter-century, is particularly deafening. Imagine Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi letting an old home-state rival waltz back to office. Organized labor, the closest thing that exists to New York's old Democratic machines, has also for the most part stayed out of the race or backed Cuomo. And then there's The New York Times editorial page, which has a proven record of influencing local elections. The dominant local daily initially declined to offer an endorsement. Instead, they empaneled a group of local citizens to offer their preferences — Lander was the most popular — and eventually ran an unsigned editorial denouncing Mamdani and urging New Yorkers not to rank him. To be fair, it has been difficult for any candidate to get much attention when so much of traditional and social media is drenched in national coverage and namely the return of another rampaging son of Queens. Perhaps the most important non-event took place before the campaign even got fully underway. That was when Trump won last year and Attorney General Letitia James decided not to run for mayor. James may never have ultimately entered the race, but multiple New York Democrats told me there was a backstage campaign to nudge her into the race. A Black woman from Brooklyn who ran the inquiry into Cuomo's sexual harassment, James would've been the obvious Stop Andrew candidate. 'If Tish James had run, it would have been no race — she would have won hands down,' the Rev. Al Sharpton told me. 'And I think that is why we ended up where we are.' Sharpton, speaking in the back of his National Action Network's Harlem headquarters just minutes after hosting Cuomo there, said: 'I would have wanted to see Tish James run.' With James out and Adams cutting his deal with Trump, Cuomo was emboldened. Some Democrats, including Hochul and most crucially James, cast about for an alternative and landed on City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, also a Black woman. However, Adams got in late, had little name ID and wasn't able to raise much money. And by then, many New York Democrats knew, and feared, Cuomo well enough to jump on board with him or at least stay out of his way. 'The only people with 'rizz' are the anti-establishment socialists who can't win citywide,' complained Lis Smith, a Democratic strategist and still-deciding New York voter. It may be the largest city in the country, but the talent is either average, blocked by aging incumbents or simply happy to wait for a future gubernatorial or Senate run and avoid a job that not only may be the country's second-hardest but also ends rather than launches careers. Look no further than the last three former mayors — Rudy Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio — and the current incumbent. The former mayors all ran for president and found about as much success as the Jets have in reaching the playoffs. And Adams called himself 'the future' and 'the face' of the Democratic Party upon winning in 2021, only to face federal charges three years later. The city's current mayor and the leading hopefuls to replace him converged earlier this month at the funeral for longtime Rep. Charlie Rangel, a homegoing that amounted to a state funeral in New York. The service was held in St. Patrick's, the city's grandest cathedral. Cardinal Timothy Dolan, New York's Archbishop, presided. Dignitaries filled the pews and took to the pulpit to remember the long-serving House member and 'Lion of Lenox Avenue,' who 'thought the 'H' in Heaven stood for Harlem,' as one of his eulogists said. It was a grand mix of the Black church and the Catholic church, and it was exquisitely timed in the political calendar in a way I think Rangel would have loved. 'What a scene!' he may have said in that gravelly, 'New Yawk' voice, eyes twinkling and bow tie knotted smartly. The mayoral candidates played to type. Adams arrived at the front of the church, with most people already seated, at 9:54 for a 9:45 service. He's only the second Black mayor in the city's history, but he didn't speak and was scarcely mentioned, fitting for someone who's become a non-person in the minds of political New York. Mamdani zipped around the pews before the service, offering a hand to people he recognized, being greeted by some he didn't and generally playing the role of both outsider and young man in a hurry. He sat behind a massive marble pillar that had a wheelchair stuffed between it and the pew, 11 rows back from the front of the sanctuary. Cuomo sat in the fourth row and acted as though he were still in high office. He chatted with Nancy Pelosi, an old family friend, before the service and visited with other current and former officials, but notably avoided his former nemesis, de Blasio, who was inches away. When Mamdani finally mustered the courage to walk to the front rows and greet the VIPs before the service, none stood except for de Blasio. It was great theater, an allegory for the campaign, but the politicking in such an august setting was also something else: a reminder that there's always been a thin line separating the hacks and the statesmen of New York. The Roosevelts didn't have clean hands when it came to Tammany Hall, and their highbrow heirs also did what it took to win. One of my favorite New York artifacts is the letter an on-the-make professor named Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote to Tammany boss Carmine De Sapio in 1971. Addressing his note to De Sapio in the 'United States Prison Facility' of Allendale, Pennsylvania, Moynihan recalls his 11th Avenue upbringing ('George Washington Plunkitt's old district'), laments that De Sapio was denied parole and offers regret that he 'never got to know you fellows very well' before assuring the boss that he has 'a friend on the Harvard faculty.' It's redolent of reformers and regulars, the 20th century New York of the 'Three Is' — when Democrats would strive to nominate a ticket that could reflect Ireland, Italy and Israel. But for Cuomo, the past is never dead — it's not even past. Speaking to closely huddled reporters avoiding a summer drizzle outside of Sharpton's Harlem headquarters, Cuomo reminded a young journalist that he had worked on his father's losing mayoral race, a formative campaign in the life of both Cuomos. He had been asked about the biggest surprise in this contest. 'Nothing,' he said with a shrug. 'My father ran for mayor before you were born, 1977,' Cuomo recalled, boasting: 'I know this city like the back of my hand.' Cuomo has long lived in the suburbs and, as governor, in Albany, and he's sensitive about criticisms over his residency. Which may be part of the reason he insists on driving himself around the city in a black Dodge Charger. Yet I didn't think about it again until the following day, which happened to be both Father's Day and what would have been Mario Cuomo's 93rd birthday. Andrew was at his second Black church of the day, and this one was in Jamaica, Queens, his father's hometown. Speaking during the service, and at another one in Brooklyn earlier in the morning, Cuomo said matter-of-factly that he still talks to his deceased father, and in fact his father talks back, and at times they argue. So when I caught up with Cuomo in Queens, I asked what his father would think of his candidacy today. 'Oh, he would think it's exactly right,' said the younger Cuomo. Then he was off to the races in ways that made clear he, too, was still consumed by 2024 and was interested in leading his party's recovery. 'Donald Trump, we lost to Donald Trump, 500,000 fewer Democrats turned out' in New York, he said by way of explaining why his dad would approve of his bid. The party, Cuomo said, had lost too much of its working-class base. ''What are you going to do for me?' It has to be real, it has to be tangible,' he said, articulating what those voters expect and arguing he fits the bill because of his record of results. A record, he argued, which includes his performance on Covid-19. Cuomo said the idea that his effort on the pandemic is a blemish is '100 percent wrong' and called the coverage of deaths in nursing homes 'all created for New York Post readers.' He was full of swagger, even insisting on going off the record a couple of times as though he was still in Albany telephoning the tabloids to steer their coverage. The previous night, at a rally in Manhattan, Ocasio-Cortez had said Cuomo was only running for mayor to run for president in 2028. What say you, I asked. 'I'm doing this for this,' he said of the mayor's race. He then talked about the importance of focusing on the here and now, but in the process unfurled his resume, recalling his service as HUD secretary and even claiming, without mentioning the election, that he had been 'on the short list for vice-president.' Sounding like a Queens Sun Tzu, Cuomo said: 'If you are watching the step ahead, you'll trip on this step, I believe that.' It was all a non-answer that pointed at his obvious ambition, quest for redemption and, perhaps, the chance to succeed at what his father never dared to try. 'You think you're going to get a different answer?' when I tried once more. 'You think this is my first rodeo?' I was reminded that it's very much not a bit later, after Cuomo was reunited with all three of his daughters that Father's Day Sunday. They stood behind him outside the church in Queens, and their dad's mood brightened with their presence as he addressed a handful of reporters and photographers. Were they happy he was back in the political fray, I asked? Each of them took their turn speaking with pride about their father, and Cuomo beamed. He also recognized something else: This was a moment that should be captured. He gestured to an aide, but the staffer didn't initially get the message. So the aide walked over to the former governor as the girls spoke. The staffer leaned in and Cuomo whispered: 'Film it.' Forty-eight years later, he still thought like the operative he had been on his dad's mayoral campaign. I should talk a bit about the state of the city. This is one of those moments when perception is at odds with the statistics. As with so many American cities, New York has entered what I call the post-post-Covid moment. While it didn't suffer the spike in carjackings as other parts of the country did — the city's geographic and population density is a natural prophylactic — New York had its troubles during and immediately after the pandemic. There were abhorrent crimes on the subway and there are still nuisance matters, such as the toothpaste and shampoo being behind a locked window at the drugstore. Still, Adams is going to preside over a historic plunge in violent crime. The first five months of this year brought the lowest number of shootings and homicides in recorded New York City history. There's a noticeably increased police presence, particularly on the subways, where Hochul has state authority and intervened. Coming out of the Washington Square station one afternoon this month, I counted six uniformed city cops underground. Much of Manhattan feels like a summer playground, downtown for those under 40 (or under 40 at heart) and the Upper East and West sides for those middle-aged (or still so at heart). 'As for people who are like, 'the city is crumbling,' try getting into a restaurant,' de Blasio told me over a pesto bagel near his Brooklyn home. And yet the most recent Marist survey of the city's voters found that 77 percent believed New York is headed in the wrong direction. Part of that can be attributed to embarrassment over Adams' saga in addition to lingering quality-of-life concerns, less fear of being shot and more unease with the mentally ill homeless person muttering to you. Recalling what police commissioner Bill Bratton once told him, de Blasio said: 'We have to separate crime and order, but the public doesn't.' However, the city's discontents also center on something else, which has been the heartbeat of Mamdani's campaign — affordability. For all his nifty videos and quick-on-the-draw wit, Mamdani wouldn't be giving Cuomo such a race had the assemblymember not harnessed such a galvanizing issue. His calls for a rent freeze and broader lament about the costs of living in New York are what vaulted him into contention and have made him a progressive phenomenon, particularly with young voters. 'Mamdani understood that he was never going to own the crime issue. He was for defund, but he could own affordability, and that's where he planted his flag early,' said Howard Wolfson, a longtime Bloomberg adviser and shrewd student of the city's politics. 'And as crime has come down, the issue of affordability has risen and it turns out it was the smart play.' Odd as it may sound, affordability was a luxury issue that became more resonant once people feared less for their personal safety. In the weeks leading up to the mayoral primary, one could be forgiven for thinking that Mamdani was the only candidate in the race, at least away from a TV set where Cuomo and his allies are carpet-bombing their young rival. To walk around the city is to see mostly Mamdani signs, pamphlets and canvassers. Strolling from Sharpton's 145th St. office 35 blocks down to Central Park North, I ran into three sets of Mamdani volunteers, all of them clearly under 50. Along the way, I popped into the Frederick E. Samuel Community Democratic Club, one of Harlem's old Black clubhouses, and the conversation quickly turned to Mamdani's appeal with young voters. Maurice Cummings, who's an aide to a Democratic assemblymember, recalled a recent gathering Mamdani had in Harlem. 'The thing that I find interesting is that he's crossing racial lines, the place was filled with Black, white, Indian, Puerto Rican,' said Cummings, who's 52. 'I would probably have been one of the oldest folks there.' I caught a glimpse of this dynamic on the corner of 155th and Broadway in Washington Heights, where Mamdani held a press conference on Father's Day afternoon. While he addressed the cameras, a small group of New Yorkers reflecting his base gathered to greet him and offer their support. There was the post-collegiate white guy, still wearing his backpack with a Notre Dame logo, a trans person thanking him for supporting trans rights, a fellow graduate of the Bronx High School of Science and a young Jewish voter lamenting the line of questioning Mamdani, who's Muslim, had received on Jewish-related issues. What there wasn't was any older Black people (except for the one who drove by, leaned out the window and told Mamdani to take his campaign 'to the projects'). It was a similar demographic the previous night, when Mamdani held a packed rally at an event space in one of Manhattan's old piers. One of the loudest cheers of the night was when a city councilor called to 'Free Palestine,' electrifying an audience more bougie than Bronx. The only Black people there over 40 I could find were working security. Walking with Mamdani down Broadway after his press conference the next day, I asked how he could avoid the fate of other progressive candidates in Democratic primaries who couldn't expand their coalition beyond young and non-Black voters. He said he was heartened by how far he had come — he had been in two Black churches himself that morning — but it was easy to pick up traces of wishing he had more time. 'One of the greatest challenges has been having to introduce myself, because when we started this race, one percent of New Yorkers knew who I was,' Mamdani told me, adding that he believes his affordability message 'resonates' but 'the question is whether we can share it with as many people as possible.' As with Cuomo, though for far less time, Mamdani worked in politics a bit before taking the plunge himself as a candidate. So for all his progressive proposals, there's also a hunger to win and an inevitable tension between principle and politics. Some of Mamdani's own advisers are eager for him to assure more moderate New Yorkers that he won't revert to his defund-the-police calls from the Black Lives Matter era. The easiest way to do that would be to signal he'd retain Jessica Tisch, the popular police commissioner, heiress and good news story of the otherwise cringey Adams administration. 'I would consider doing so,' he said, praising Tisch's efforts to root out corruption. Mamdani wouldn't go any further, though, saying 'these conversations are ones that I will engage in after the primary.' Of course, that may be too late. He had said at his rally the night before that 'the days of moral victories are over,' but Mamdani is self-aware enough to know how far he's come in his first citywide race — and that this won't be his last campaign. 'As a Muslim democratic socialist, I am no stranger to bad PR,' he joked. And after I asked him about the three rings he wears and wondered where he was hiding his Bowdoin class ring, he shot back: 'That's for the re-elect.'

Boston Globe

12 hours ago

• Boston Globe

Trump makes treason great again, one Army base at a time

Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up But to circumvent Congress's mandate that military facilities no longer evoke Confederate officers who fought against the United States in defense of slavery and the rupture of the Union, the name change came with a twist: The Pentagon now claims Fort Bragg honors a little-known World War II private named Advertisement On June 11, the Army announced it would Advertisement But during his appearance at Fort Bragg, Trump didn't trouble to keep up the pretense. 'For a little breaking news,' he said, 'we are also going to be restoring the names to Fort Pickett, Fort Hood, Fort Gordon, Fort Rucker, Fort Polk, Fort A.P. Hill, and Fort Robert E. Lee. We won a lot of battles out of those forts. It's no time to change.' Though the Pentagon may have a new namesake for Fort Lee, Trump's loyalty clearly lies with the original Confederate leader. His rhetoric may As a kid in grade school, I was taught that while Lee fought on the wrong side during the Civil War, he was a good and gallant American who personally detested slavery and backed the Confederacy only out of loyalty to his home state. For decades, that was the received wisdom. Even some US presidents echoed it. Advertisement This is a fable — ' As the Lee legend was first being manufactured in the decades following the Civil War, abolitionists and civil rights advocates did their best to debunk it. Frederick Douglass, the foremost Black leader of his age, The historian John Reeves debunked much of this mythology in a 2018 book, ' Lee insisted after the Civil War that 'the best men of the South' — a group in which he obviously included himself — had always 'been anxious to do away with this institution' of slavery. In reality, as Reeves documented, the 'best men of the South' — or at least the South's most prominent politicians — engineered secession for the explicit purpose of upholding slavery. Every state that joined the Confederacy, including Lee's Virginia, Advertisement Lee embraced that attitude. For decades he had been an enslaver. At the start of the war, he held approximately 200 individuals as property and was known for breaking up enslaved families and brutally punishing recaptured runaways. True, he once opined, in 'I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former,' he wrote. 'The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically.' Slavery, he added, was 'necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms & tempests of fiery Controversy.' In short, while Lee considered slavery undesirable in the long run, he regarded it as 'necessary' for Black people's welfare. And he firmly believed its demise should be left patiently in God's hands, not hastened by abolitionists and their 'fiery Controversy.' Advertisement No less ludicrous than the myth that Lee hated slavery is the insistence that he should not be faulted for having sided with Virginia and the Confederacy instead of fighting for the Union. But Lee understood the moral wrong he was committing by breaching his oath of loyalty to the United States. 'Secession is nothing but revolution,' he wrote in Lee spent the better part of four years 'levying war against' the United States and 'adhering to their enemies.' That made him an American traitor, not an American hero. To have named a US Army base after him was an appalling blunder, one that Congress belatedly corrected. By pledging to undo that correction and to reattach names like 'Fort Robert E. Lee' to American military installations, Trump isn't upholding history. He is defiling it. Lee and other Confederate leaders waged war on their country to keep fellow human beings in chains. No patriot can make America great again by honoring such men. Jeff Jacoby can be reached at