Mamdani ‘Immigrant’ Map Ignores Italian, Irish & Jewish Neighborhoods
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s office released a map promoting the Big Apple’s “immigrant enclaves.” But the mayor’s map is causing controversy because he left off any reference to Italian and Irish neighborhoods and Jewish neighborhoods.
Little Africa made the map and so did Little Palestine, but not Little Italy.
“This is not a clerical error. This is cultural erasure,” Mike Crispi, president of the Italian American Civil Rights Leaguem told the Washington Examiner. “Little Italy is sacred ground. It is where Italian immigrants came with nothing, worked like hell, opened shops, raised families, built churches, fed the city, and helped make New York what it is.”
Mamdani’s City Hall can find room for every fashionable progressive constituency, but somehow it cannot find Little Italy, Crispi added.
Councilwoman Joann Ariola (R-Queens) told The New York Post that snubbing Little Italy, which was established in the late 19th century, was a major flub.
“They were able to get a Little Bhod-Tibet in there, but what about the original ‘Little neighborhood,’ Little Italy?” Ariola told The Post. “And what about areas like Woodlawn, in the Bronx, which are home to plenty of Irish immigrants? Do the Irish and Italians not count for the Mayor’s office?”
Kevin McCabe, a former City Council chief of staff, told the newspaper the map shamefully leaves out generations of folks hailing from The Emerald Isle.
“I guess they never heard of Woodlawn or Sunnyside but that’s OK, the Irish are everywhere, the way it’s supposed to be,” McCabe, an original Working Families Party operative, told The Post. “The British Empire at the height of its powers couldn’t cancel the Irish, I’m not too worried about a couple of ill-informed bureaucrats.”
Jewish neighborhoods fared even worse — they were all erased from the map.
“The Mayor’s Office made a map of NYC’s immigrant enclaves: Little Africa, Little Poland, Little Palestine. But they just couldn’t figure out how to represent 11% of the city. Couldn’t decipher where the Jews are from,” writer Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt wrote on X. “Huge riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”
State Assemblyman Kalman Yeger, who represents heavily Orthodox Jewish southern Brooklyn, said it’s not the first time the Muslim mayor has tried to “erase” the Jews.
“Mr. Mamdani’s erasing Jews is an essential part of his brand. No surprise,” Yeger said.