It has already been a heck of a year, and it’s not even two weeks old yet.
On January 1st, 2026, Kampala, Uganda-born, New York-raised Zohran Mamdani became the Big Apple’s 111th Mayor.
Two days later, President Donald Trump bombed Venezuela, flew President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, First Lady Cilia, to NYC, and, in handcuffs, brought them to the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.
New Year’s Day was frigid and 1000% brick. Politicians, activists, community leaders, and everyday people joined the 4,000 shivering folk packed into City Hall Plaza and the adjacent park for the NYC mayoral inauguration.
DJ Moma kept the crowd jamming during the almost two-hour waiting period, where journalists and community members lined up shivering, shuffling from one foot to another. For over 2 hours of speeches and music, looking on from the stage were the likes of Attorney General Letitia James, former Mayor Eric Adams, Governor Kathy Hochul, and Public Advocate Jumaane Williams.
But media attention was to swiftly turn to breaking news around the clock coverage of Trump’s strike in South America.
“Unilaterally attacking a sovereign nation is an act of war and a violation of federal and international law,” said Mayor Mamdani of the “U.S. military capture” of Maduro and his wife.
“This blatant pursuit of regime change doesn’t just affect those abroad; it directly impacts New Yorkers, including tens of thousands of Venezuelans who call this city home. My focus is their safety and the safety of every New Yorker, and my administration will continue to monitor the situation and issue relevant guidance.”
The president’s military actions spurred immediate local, national, and international responses. Trump, who has claimed that whites have been subjected to genocide in South Africa, used the alleged assault on Christians by ISIS, as the basis of his ariel assault on Sokoto, in northern Nigeria on Christmas Day; followed by another threat this week to go back “guns a-blazing,” to Africa’s most populous nation, and one of the world’s greatest oil producers.
Trump has stated that he has other nations in his sights, including Mexico, Cuba, Colombia, Canada, and even Alaska and Greenland.
Maduro and Flores were arraigned on Monday in a Manhattan court, charges including narco terrorism and drug trafficking. Critics cite Venezuelan oil and silver as the real motivation.
Hundreds rallied in Times Square on Saturday, January 3rd, 2026, mere hours after America’s Venezuela mission, speaking for the Brooklyn-based December 12th Movement, their International Secretariat, Roger Wareham, denounced the “kidnapping of President Maduro and First Lady Celia Flores; the bombing of Venezuela and the murder of at least 40 Venezuelan citizens. We condemn the militarization of the Caribbean, and the ongoing threats to Cuba, Colombia, and Mexico.”
Attorney Wareham stated, “As Black people, we stand with our brothers and sisters in Latin America and the Caribbean, and indeed in recently bombed Nigeria, to denounce that might makes right. We are living under this same threat as a nationalized police force invades cities run by Black mayors or with high concentrations of Black and Brown people. The thin veil of laws has been ripped away, and the naked theft of resources is visible.”
D12 determined that the socialist Presidents Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro governments have “used the country’s oil wealth to: cut the illiteracy rate; provide free healthcare and subsidized food; reduce poverty and income inequality; build public housing.” Internationally, D12 said, the Venezuelan government has provided “free or low-cost oil to Black, Brown, Indigenous and poor white communities in the U.S.–including New York City, and offered petroleum, and logistical support to the New Orleans victims of Hurricane Katrina.
The U.S. government refused the offer. Instead, the U.S. response has been to impose sanctions designed to destroy the economy and persuade the Venezuelan people to overthrow its government.”
Aligning itself with the African Union comment, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) said that while the organization “recognizes the right of states to fight international crimes [they wish] to remind the international community about their obligation to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each other, as enshrined in international law…and urges all states to respect the independence and territorial integrity of Venezuela.”
Former NYC Council and NYS Assembly member Charles Barron said, “ The international community must condemn President Trump’s imperialist military act of aggression against a sovereign nation, Venezuela, and the reported arrest of the democratically elected President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, First Lady Cilia.
This is reminiscent of President George H. Bush’s bombing of Panama and the arrest of its President Manuel Noriega, and President Barack Obama and NATO’s bombing of Libya, leading to the brutal killing of its President Muammar Gaddafi. Remember the ‘Monroe Doctrine’, the U.S. wants imperialistic hegemonic control of its self-proclaimed ‘backyard’ Latin American and Caribbean countries.”
New Jersey-based international activist Brother Oji told Our Time Press, “Internal US politics – dismal economic numbers, and projected mid-term electoral disaster necessitated a desperate Hail Mary move. Attempts to distract the American public – with claims of Christian genocide in Nigeria, and narco-terrorism bases in Venezuela – are for the shallow-minded,” he charged.
“Projected 2026 layoffs in the American oil industry have been averted with a singular act, and statement. American companies ‘will take control of Venezuela’s state-run oil industry, and run the Venezuelan oil industry.’ Flood the American market with cheap oil to placate the electorate, and keep the oil industry afloat.”
Geo-political chicanery between Chinese and American rivals over Venezuela’s extra-heavy crude oil is afoot, said Oji. “Venezuela, from the days of Chavez, has its oil transactions in the Chinese currency, NOT in dollars. Contributing to the de-dollarization of the global financial system…Venezuela is a supplier of discounted oil to Cuba and China.
With one move, geopolitical issues are addressed, a restless electorate is pacified, a brainwashed segment of the population worships at the altar of a demi-god, and economic succor is supposedly on the horizon.”
Meanwhile, standing before his parents, academic Mahmood Mamdani and filmmaker Mira Nair, his wife Rama Duwaji, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and sworn in by Senator Bernie Sanders, former mayors Adams and Bill de Blasio, and Public Advocate Williams, giving an emotional speech, Mayor Mamdani spoke from his inaugural podium.
“This is the occasion to reset expectations, that I should use this opportunity to encourage the people of New York to ask for little and expect even less. I will do no such thing. The only expectation I seek to reset is that of small expectations. Beginning today, we will govern expansively and audaciously. We may not always succeed. But never will we be accused of lacking the courage to try.”
Mamdani hit the ground running, naming new appointees, including Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels and five Deputy Mayors; revoking all Mayor Adams’ executive orders signed after he was federally indicted last September; and announcing “major housing initiatives to protect tenants, crack down on negligent landlords, and build more homes.”
As Mamdani leaned into the cheering crowd on New Year’s Day, he added, “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”
