New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) on Wednesday weighed in on the “Woke 1 was crazy” remark said by New York City council member Chi Ossé and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), echoing that “sometimes, what you believe can change.”
Mamdani, while at an event breaking ground on the long-stalled Tremont Avenue busway in the Bronx, said candidates running for office in New York or across the U.S. have the responsibility to say “what they believe.”
In a clip posted to social media by Newsday, Mamdani said, “And sometimes, what you believe can change and develop, it can grow, and I know that there are some for whom they still believe that.”
“I’ve made very clear that I do not believe in defunding the police, that I will not be defunding the police,” the mayor continued.
Mamdani added that delivering on public safety means working with the New York Police Department “alongside many other partners,” before citing that the NYPD has reported “the fewest murders on record in New York City and the fewest shooting incidents on record in New York City” through the first seven months of 2026.
“And that, to me, is how we measure a lot of our public safety,” he concluded.
The phrase made headlines after Ocasio-Cortez paraphrased Ossé on ABC News’s “This Week” on Sunday when she was asked about former Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong’s (D) past positions. She went on to explain Hong’s shift in positions.
“Well, you know, I think that during this time and … especially during COVID, there was a huge opening of the Overton window,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We were shut down. There was some of the highest unemployment rates that we have seen because of those shutdowns. And I think that the doors were really open in trying to entertain any and every policy that was going to get us to a better place.”
Ocasio-Cortez said these discussions were “quite fruitful” but noted that “during lockdown, of course, rhetoric in that time is not rhetoric that we would use today.”
Hong — a democratic socialist like Ocasio-Cortez, Ossé and Mamdani — in the past made statements about abolishing prisons and defunding the police, along with her comments about canceling Thanksgiving, a holiday she described to CNN as “incredibly painful for many people in our communities.”
Hong lost to David Crowley, Milwaukee County executive, on Tuesday. This gave leftists a rare high-profile defeat amid a wave of democratic socialist victories defeating moderate and incumbent Democrats.
Wisconsin’s outgoing Gov. Tony Evers (D) endorsed Crowley in the race, while Hong had the support of some progressive lawmakers like Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) — but not from others such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) or Ocasio-Cortez.
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