multilingual

New York City, the US: Swinging around a tree mimicking the signature open-arm lean of Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan, Zohran Mamdani asks, “Hey! Have you ever voted before?” An enthusiastic group of Hindi/Urdu-speaking New Yorkers respond: “Yes!”

In the June 4 video posted on X, the 33-year-old Democratic Socialist member of the New York State Assembly then explains ranked choice voting using mango lassi, a yoghurt-based drink from the Punjab region of India, amid clips from popular Bollywood films and scores.

This is just one example of the kinds of videos populating Mamdani’s social media leading up to his 56 percent win in the New York City mayoral Democratic primary on July 1.

Mamdani was relatively unknown before the primary election, polling as low as one percent in an Emerson College survey in February 2025. But his grassroots campaign mobilised a multicultural coalition of voters, in part, by speaking directly to them — in their native tongue.

The government of New York state estimates that New Yorkers speak more than 800 languages, and as many as 2.5 million struggle with communicating in English. Experts, however, say Mamdani successfully used his skills in multiple languages to appeal to voters who often are not targeted by mainstream election campaigns, highlighting policy proposals targeting voters’ biggest concerns, like affordability.

Moments after ranked-choice voting totals were finalised, Mamdani’s team posted a campaign message garnering more than 5.7 million views on X alone, explaining a five-point breakdown of “What We Won on Election Day”: Trump voters, Adams voters, new voters, coalitions and turnout.

“Most campaigns focus on ‘triple primes’ – New Yorkers who voted in the last three primaries,” said Mamdani. “But this strategy ignored most of our city. We knew we could turn them out if they saw themselves in our policies.”

Speaking between clips of himself using Hindi, Urdu and Spanish, Mamdani explained, “We ran a campaign that tried to talk to every New Yorker, whether I could speak their language or simply tried. And the coalition that came out on Tuesday reflected the mosaic of these five boroughs.”

Among the areas Mamdani won by large margins were South Asian neighbourhoods such as City Line, Ozone Park and Jamaica Hills; Latino neighbourhoods including Corona, Washington Heights, Pelham Bay and Woodhaven; and Chinese communities in Flushing, Chinatown and Bensonhurst.

A Ugandan-born South Asian Muslim immigrant himself, Mamdani speaks both Hindi and Urdu – a fluency that allowed him to extend his reach to voters through social media videos.

Soniya Munshi, associate professor in urban studies and adviser to Asian-American community studies at Queens College, told Al Jazeera that these types of videos worked as conversation starters through Bollywood references that span the decades – from the 1970s onwards – recognisable to many South Asian diasporas of different ages and with different pathways to the US.

“I saw his Hindi/Urdu video move from Instagram to text chats among second-generation South Asians to WhatsApp family threads to discussions about Zohran’s platform for an affordable NYC,” said Munshi, who herself is a second-generation South Asian New Yorker. “These videos opened up a bigger conversation with friends, families and communities about our experiences, our conditions, our own hopes for the city we call home, and they also moved voters to come out for Mamdani.”

Cultural references and direct messaging

More than half of New York City’s South Asian population is of Indian descent, but Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities have seen the most growth over the past two decades. South Asians now make up 22.5 percent of the city’s Asian population, most of them immigrants. Mamdani’s campaign materials – in Hindi, Urdu, Arabic, Bengali and other languages – spoke directly to immigrant New Yorkers about the material issues affecting their lives.

“It’s critical to note the significance of Mamdani’s videos in Hindi/Urdu and Bangla,” said Munshi. “These two communities are among those with the highest levels of limited English proficiency households, essential workers, and poverty rates of all immigrant groups in NYC … Ultimately, what made these South Asian language videos so powerful was the culturally relevant references combined with the direct message of his vision and platform.”

Chowdury Md Moshin, 68, a native of Bangladesh who now lives in Jackson Heights, sat in Travers Park on a warm late June day reading a newspaper, his stark white hair and shirt contrasting with the bright green of the swaying trees around him.

A speaker of Bengali or Bangla himself, Moshin appreciated hearing from a mayoral candidate speaking a language he understands.

“I think he will be a good mayor and will make New York City cleaner,” said Moshin. “I love him.”

In one of the videos posted during the final push before the Democratic primary election, Mamdani demonstrated ranked-choice voting with Council Member Shahana Hanif’s 39th New York City Council District, using a plate of mishti doi, a sweet yoghurt dessert from the Bengal region of the Indian subcontinent.

“His Bangla-language video with Shahana Hanif, the first Bangladeshi Muslim woman to serve as city councilperson in NYC, was also significant,” said Munshi. “Bangla is not a South Asian language Mamdani is fluent in, and we see him making a good effort to speak with Hanif about the election.”

The digital agency behind this content, as well as Mamdani’s first viral video with over 3.5 million views on X, is called Melted Solids. The Brooklyn-based collective, founded in 2019 by Anthony DiMieri and Debbie Saslaw, has worked with Mamdani on various campaigns since as early as 2021.

In an interview with Adweek, Saslaw spoke to the 2025 primary, saying, “I’m [a] marketer and storyteller, and what I thought was necessary and needed in the political space was the ability to speak to regular New Yorkers, like using advertising … as a vessel to hear their concerns.”

Mara Einstein, digital marketing critic and author of Hoodwinked: How Marketers Use the Same Tactics as Cults, told Al Jazeera that, “They [Melted Solids] know him, which is why they could produce content that conveyed his specific voice.”

“They are also not a traditional agency,” added Einstein. “What Melted Solids did that was different is get rid of the red, white, and blue colour scheme that has dominated political campaigns. Purple and yellow/gold [colours used by Mamdani’s campaign for flyers, signs and branding] is striking and unexpected. The typography harkens back to grocery store signs, giving it a neighbourhood-y, everyman feel.”

‘I like how he talks’

For a campaign run on affordability and reaching every New Yorker, this analysis bodes well. But ultimately, experts say that Mamdani’s social media engagement performed well because his vision and platform were at the core of all of his content.

“The social media content was delightful to watch, well-produced, and engaging, but what was most important was that it had substance,” said Munshi. “It gave us something to talk about that was bigger than Mamdani as an individual or even his campaign. It activated something at a collective level.”

Outside the polls in Woodside on election day, Munshi asked an older Spanish-speaking Latina woman whom she planned to vote for. The woman reached into her purse, pulled out a worn Working Families Party flyer, and pointed to Mamdani’s face. “Him,” she said. “I like how he talks.”

“To me, this indicated that Mamdani’s communication wasn’t just about the language he is speaking in,” said Munshi. “But how he used language – clear, simple, focused, relatable to New Yorkers who are concerned with their everyday needs in this city.”

With five months until the general election, Mamdani and Melted Solids still have work to do as they face off against incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who is backed by US President Donald Trump.

But if former New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo’s failed 2025 mayoral bid – backed by $25m raised by the super PAC Fix the City – is any indication, Einstein said, “No marketing, no matter how good it is, can sell a bad product. Cuomo is evidence of that.”

California Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán urged the Federal Communications Commission on Monday to follow through on plans to modernize the federal emergency alert system and provide multilingual alerts in natural disasters for residents who speak a language other than English at home.

The call comes nearly five months after deadly fires in Los Angeles threatened communities with a high proportion of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders — some with limited English proficiency — highlighting the need for multilingual alerts.

In a letter sent to Brendan Carr, the Republican chair of the FCC, Barragán (D-San Pedro) expressed “deep concern” that the FCC under the Trump administration has delayed enabling multilingual Wireless Emergency Alerts for severe natural disasters such as wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis.

“This is about saving lives,” Barragán said in an interview with The Times. “You’ve got about 68 million Americans that use a language other than English and everybody should have the ability to to understand these emergency alerts. We shouldn’t be looking at any politicization of alerts — certainly not because someone’s an immigrant or they don’t know English.”

Multilingual emergency alerts should be in place across the nation, Barragán said. But the January Pacific Palisades and Eaton fires served as a reminder that the need is particularly acute in Los Angeles.

Not only does L.A. have a significant risk of wildfires, flooding, mudslides, and earthquakes, but the sprawling region is home to a diverse immigrant population, some of whom have limited English proficiency.

“When you think about it, in California we have wildfires, we’re always on earthquake alert,” Barragán said. “In other parts of the country, it could be hurricanes or tornadoes — we just want people to have the information on what to do.”

Four months ago, the FCC was supposed to publish an order that would allow Americans to get multilingual alerts

In October 2023, the FCC approved rules to update the federal emergency alert system by enabling Wireless Emergency Alerts to be delivered in more than a dozen languages — not just English, Spanish and sign language — without the need of a translator.

Then, the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau developed templates for critical disaster alerts in the 13 most commonly spoken languages in the US. In January, the commission declared a “major step forward” in expanding alert languages when it issued a report and order that would require commercial mobile service providers to install templates on cellphones within 30 months of publication of the federal register.

“The language you speak shouldn’t keep you from receiving the information you or your family need to stay safe,” then-FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a January statement.

But shortly after, Trump took control of the White House. Under the chairmanship of Brendan Carr, the commission has yet to publish the January 8 Report and Order in the Federal Register — a critical step that triggers the 30-month compliance clock.

“This delay is not only indefensible but dangerous,” Barragán wrote in a letter to Carr that was signed by nearly two dozen members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus. “It directly jeopardizes the ability of our communities to receive life-saving emergency information in the language they understand best.”

Barragán noted that Carr previously supported the push for multilingual alerts when he was a member of the commission, before taking over leadership.

“Your failure to complete this ministerial step — despite having supported the rule itself — has left this life-saving policy in limbo and significantly delayed access to multilingual alerts for millions of Americans,” she wrote.

Asked by The Times what explained the delay, Barragán said her office had been told that Trump’s regulatory freeze prohibited all federal agencies, including the FCC, from publishing any rule in the Federal Register until a designated Trump official is able to review and approve it.

“It’s all politics,” she said. “We don’t know why it’s stuck there and why the administration hasn’t moved forward, but it seems, like, with everything these days, they’re waiting on the president’s green light.”

Barragán also noted that multilingual alerts helped first responders.

“If you have a community that’s supposed to be evacuated, and they’re not evacuating because they don’t know they’re supposed to evacuate, that’s only going to hurt first responders and emergency crews,” she said. “So I think this is a safety issue all around, not just for the people receiving it.”

A study published earlier this year by UCLA researchers and the Asian American and Pacific Islanders Equity Alliance found that Asian communities in harm’s way during the January L.A. fires encountered difficulties accessing information about emergency evacuations because of language barriers.

Manjusha Kulkarni, executive director of AAPI Equity Alliance, a coalition of 50 community-based groups that serves the 1.6 million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who live in Los Angeles, told The Times the FCC’s failure to push alerts in more languages represented a “real dereliction of duty.”

Over half a million Asian Americans across L.A. County are classified as Limited English Proficiency, with many speaking primarily in Chinese, Korean, Tagalog and Vietnamese, she noted.

“President Trump and many members of his administration have made clear they plan to go on the attack against immigrants,” Kulkarni said. “If this makes the lives of immigrants easier, then they will stand in its way.”

During the January L.A. fires, Kulkarni said, residents complained that fire alerts were sent only in English and Spanish. More than 12,000 of the 50,000 Asian immigrants and their descendants who lived within four evacuation zones — Palisades, Eaton, Hurst and Hughes — need language assistance.

“There were community members who didn’t realize until they were evacuated that the fire was so close to them, so they had little to no notice of it,” Kulkarni said. “Really, it can mean life or death in a lot of cases where you don’t get the information, where it’s not translated in a city and county like Los Angeles.”

Community members ended up suffering not just because of the fires themselves, Kulkarni said, but because of federal and local officials’ failure to provide alerts in languages every resident can understand.

“It is incumbent that the alerts be made available,” she said. “We need those at local, state and federal levels to do their part so that individuals can survive catastrophic incidents.”