Cuban-born Karen Rodriguez and American-Lithuanian Gabriella Hoffman communicate to Fox Information Digital about their household historical past with socialism and warn over NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.
Vivid reminiscences and tales of woe have left scars on two descendants of socialism, who are actually issuing public warnings over the way forward for New York Metropolis below the rule of Democratic-socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.
“After I hear a number of the plans that [Mamdani] has for New York Metropolis, once more, it is that, ‘copy, paste,’” Cuban-born Miami resident Karen Rodriguez advised Fox Information Digital. “It is simply very triggering as a result of it would not work… You’ve gotten Cubans, they make it right here to the US, they usually go right into a grocery retailer they usually cry… When was the final time you cried in a grocery retailer? By no means, proper? As a result of it is so regular, and we take it with no consideration.”
“My ears perk up any time I hear individuals embracing socialism, particularly very privileged individuals like this aspiring mayoral candidate from New York Metropolis, speak about how he needs to grab the technique of productions, as he talked about up to now, he would not like non-public property,” first-generation Lithuanian-American Gabriella Hoffman additionally advised Digital.
Hoffman and Rodriguez, stressing the election of Mamdani, expressed main considerations for New Yorkers, highlighting their very own households’ struggles with “wretched ideologies firsthand.”
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Whereas Mamdani’s marketing campaign platform has not formally referred to as for full-scale nationalization of industries – a system described as authorities controlling the technique of manufacturing and the take-over of personal enterprise – his proposals embrace free buses, hire management and city-owned grocery shops.
New York Metropolis mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani subsequent to the likes of Cuba’s Fidel Castro and the previous Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin. (Getty Photographs)
Rodriguez, a former journalist and present public college trainer, mentioned her household’s connection to communism started earlier than she was born. Her mom’s father and sister fled Cuba for Miami below Fidel Castro’s regime in the course of the Mariel Boatlift in 1980, which she notes because the second-largest mass immigration from Cuba.
Her mom was a 15-year-old skilled gymnast in Havana when her father and sister left, selecting to remain in Cuba. Years later, her mom’s father started the “reclamo” course of to deliver his daughter to the U.S., however on account of lengthy immigration ready lists, it wasn’t till 1994 that she and Rodriguez emigrated.
Rodriguez got here to the U.S. at age six, shortly earlier than turning seven, an necessary age milestone in her house nation.
“If you end up seven years outdated in Cuba, the federal government decides that you just not want milk. So, at seven years outdated, they not give youngsters the correct to purchase milk. And I used to be, like, a milk lover. And I might drink my milk morning and evening to fall asleep,” Rodriguez defined. “So milk was tremendous necessary for me as a result of generally there was not plenty of different issues. And for them to take that away was going to be troublesome for my dad and mom to determine what else to feed me.”
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Hoffman now leads the D.C.-based Unbiased Girls Discussion board’s Middle for Vitality and Conservation, and is the primary American-born in her household after they fled the previous Soviet Union nearly 40 years in the past. Her dad and mom entered the U.S. by means of New York Metropolis, in the end settling in California.
Her mom and father are Lithuanian Jews who endured life below Soviet occupation in one in every of 15 republics of the united statesS.R. Her maternal grandfather additionally survived 18 months in one in every of Stalin’s gulags, a brutal Soviet labor camp.
“I recall the horrors and sacrifices that my relations made, a number of generations, my grandparents, my dad and mom. My dad and mom making the arduous journey… it wasn’t a straightforward journey to make,” Hoffman mentioned. “They misplaced some mates within the course of. A few of their relations shunned them. And it was a giant sacrifice to come back to the US beginning anew. My dad and mom got here right here nearly penniless.”
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“They stay the American dream, they’ve benefited from having the rights and privileges which might be afforded to you as an American. And if the likes of Zohran Mamdani had been to be superior and platformed and mainstreamed, lots of people who’re fleeing precise persecution by means of this type of pernicious ideology, they will not have anyplace to go,” Hoffman added.
Each Rodriguez’s and Hoffman’s respective histories share many parallels, like restricted meals provide, authorities overwatch, electrical energy blackouts and brownouts and excessive taxation implementing poverty.
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“We had what we name [the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution], which is sort of a group snitch principally. So, on each block, you might have an individual who’s designated to maintain tabs on their neighbors… And when [my family] determined to come back on the boatlift, I assume that rumor began spreading that she and my grandfather had been going to go away,” Rodriguez detailed.
“They considered it as, ‘You are a traitor, and should you’re not with me, you are in opposition to me, so that you’re opposing the regime.’ So these acts usually included yelling, insults, throwing objects, vandalism, bodily intimidation. And in my aunt’s case, her neighbors actually dragged her by the hair by means of her complete block, realizing that she was a sort one diabetic since she was 11 years outdated,” Rodriguez mentioned.
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“You needed to bribe individuals. You needed to negotiate below the desk for sure items. My dad recollects having a stint working in medication, in pharmacy, and he could be type of this mediator between individuals who wanted medication. He must function below the desk to get individuals medication,” Hoffman recalled.
Hoffman additional described how the previous Soviet Union managed practically all financial output, leaving people with little to no disposable revenue or alternative.
“Within the former Soviet Union, it was 90% that the federal government taxed you,” she claimed. “It was empty cabinets, an ideal metaphor for what Democratic socialism is… So taking my household’s expertise, making use of it to politics… as authorities turns into extra concerned and interferes extra in our private lives, particularly with respect to taxation and all these different massive spending measures, that is the place you are shedding the freedoms.”
Each Rodriguez and Hoffman encourage New York Metropolis voters to assume critically, educate themselves on candidate platforms and communicate to their neighbors.
New York mayoral candidate, State Rep. Zohran Mamdani (D-NY) speaks to supporters throughout an election evening gathering at The Greats of Craft LIC on June 24, 2025 within the Lengthy Island Metropolis neighborhood of the Queens borough in New York Metropolis. | Getty Photographs
Mamdani’s marketing campaign didn’t reply to Fox Information Digital’s request for remark or response to Rodriguez and Hoffman’s testimonies.
“Pay attention to those tales, take heed to the folks that have skilled it,” Rodriguez urged. “Take heed to the individuals who have lived it, who’ve gone by means of it, learn, evaluate, have a look at your life and have a look at it from a perspective of being grateful and realizing what a privilege it truly is to stay in America.”
“After I obtained right here from Cuba, my aunt requested me, ‘What’s the very first thing that you just wanna eat?” she recalled. “And I mentioned I had by no means seen a strawberry in my life… solely on TV and cartoons…. Is that one thing you need your youngsters to expertise?… That could be a actuality of people that stay in communist international locations.”
“If the likes of Mamdani are to be elected to the mainstream platform, we may see New York not solely changing into ‘Moscow on the Hudson,’ ‘Caracas on the Hudson,’ possibly even one thing worse,” Hoffman mentioned. “And I do know a number of the youthful persons are like, ‘Oh, that is a drained trope. We hear about this, possibly we should always experiment with this,’ however each time it has been tried, replicated, it all the time has equitable distress in consequence.”
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Gristedes grocery chain CEO and billionaire actual property mogul John Catsimatidis says the 33-year-old assemblyman is “not certified” to run New York Metropolis.
“I simply assume the tone that he would undertake, and his posture, would simply make New York Metropolis unattractive for investments. It might make it inhospitable. Lots of people will likely be leaving. He guarantees affordability. What his platform would ship, in the end, is unaffordability, excessive costs, power shortage and the like… If New York Metropolis falls on this route, what different metropolis will likely be subsequent?”
“If he was to win, I might really feel so dangerous for New York Metropolis,” Rodriguez concluded, including that in her expertise, “Communism is the one mannequin of presidency which you could vote for, however you’ll be able to’t vote yourselves out,” she warned. “When you’re too far in, as soon as you might be absolutely emerged within the communist expertise, and also you resolve that that’s not for you, that is when it is too late.”
