Two of the key faces of the left in elected office, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, met at an economic event in Manhattan on Wednesday, as world leaders gather in New York for the U.N. General Assembly.
Their meeting is the latest in a slate of encounters between left-wing U.S. politicians and kindred figures abroad as they seek to forge ties to counter the rise of right-wing populism.
Organizers behind these formal and informal gatherings say the efforts to bring together U.S. left-leaning Democrats in office and their ideological counterparts aim to contend with the well-organized, growing international movement of populists in step with President Donald Trump’s administration, as the anti-immigrant and nationalist Alternative for Germany party gains traction, and France’s Marine Le Pen and her party, National Rally, lead in polls ahead of a presidential race next year.
Wednesday’s event at Gracie Mansion, Mamdani’s residence, was billed as focused on “building an economy for the many.” Sánchez touted the success of Spain’s minimum-wage increases as “proving that another economic model is possible.”
“That is why the powerful fear us. Because day after day, we show that a different path is possible, and it works,” Sánchez said at the event, which also included the prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, and European Council President António Costa, who is a former socialist prime minister of Portugal.
Mamdani nodded to the efforts to collaborate with like-minded leaders, telling attendees, “It is truly a privilege to be able to learn from one another, emulate each others successes and develop strategies that imitate the great progress those in this room have achieved.”
Heading into the U.N. General Assembly, Mamdani over the weekend hosted left-leaning mayors from Paris, Barcelona, Rome, Amsterdam, Mexico City and elsewhere for a summit on housing, migration and climate change. And he met this week with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store, a social democrat in the same general tradition as Sánchez.
In April, politicians and world leaders convened in Barcelona for the first Global Progressive Mobilization conference, which was touted by organizers as an “alternative to conservative and far-right forces.”
The event included prerecorded remarks from democratic socialists Mamdani and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), who revitalized that tradition in U.S. politics. But it also opened up the tent to include speeches from Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz – the 2024 Democratic vice-presidential nominee who served as a moderate “Blue Dog” Democrat in Congress – and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), who has embraced economic populism and urged his party to connect with voters it lost in 2024.
Giacomo Filibeck, who served on the organizing committee for April’s conference, told The Washington Post that the participation of the U.S. Democrats was “instrumental” in showing how the global progressive movement can work together.
“In a nutshell, we have been rediscovering our internationalism that maybe in the past years was a bit put on the side,” he added.
Democrats have long sought friends abroad. As U.S. president, especially in his first term, Barack Obama courted widespread international goodwill. But he forged a special bond with Angela Merkel of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union, a center-right party at least in European terms – a different segment of the Western political spectrum than the one Mamdani is courting.
Socialists and other left-wing activists also have long organized internationally. The Sanders presidential campaign built ties to equivalent movements in Europe. The New York chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, from which Mamdani emerged, last year hosted Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the perennial French presidential candidate and founder of the hard-left party La France Insoumise.
But as energy coalesces in the left wing of the Democratic Party – with the electoral success of some candidates aligned with or backed by the DSA, Mamdani most prominent among them – the global bridge-building has taken on a new urgency.
Johan Hassel, a senior fellow and director of Global Progress Action (GPA) at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, said Trump’s reelection in 2024 was “a game changer” that helped unify global progressives.
GPA has arranged high-level meetings between U.S. officials and center-left leaders abroad. Its most recent public convening, in Toronto this past May, included appearances by Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan), former U.S. transportation secretary and potential 2028 candidate Pete Buttigieg, and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.
“The left traditionally has seen more of their differences … than their similarities. I think this is changing,” Hassel said. “You’re starting to see a larger democratic bloc of center-left liberals, Greens. The left that understands that something … larger is at stake.”
Such politicians and movements within the U.S. and abroad, he said, “are inspiring each other” as a result of their alliances. Among the examples, he cited Mamdani’s embrace of social investment in child care and housing, akin to policies long adopted by European social democrats.
Conversely, European left-wing party members made the pilgrimage to New York to canvass for Mamdani in the final weeks of his campaign. Members of Germany’s anti-capitalist party Die Linke (the Left) traveled to New York to learn more about Mamdani’s effort and met with his advisers.
Die Linke, whose platform is focused on lowering the cost of living and using state interventions to address the German capital’s housing shortage, went on to secure a historic win in the Berlin state election Sunday.
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