NYC-DSA “Orients” to a Zohran Administration
By Sid CW
On October 14, NYC-DSA will hold a general meeting, of sorts, open to the membership of the chapter. It will hear two proposals written by our Steering Committee— to establish a local dues drive and to define our chapter’s orientation to the Zohran administration. Members will not be allowed to submit amendments, submit alternative proposals for consideration, or otherwise intervene democratically through parliamentary procedure. The vote, which members will be sent over email after the meeting, will be non-binding. As a result of such a shoddy process, it comes as no surprise that the proposals themselves are politically lacking. I encourage members to attend the meeting and vote NO on both proposals.
While the dues drive proposal has its own serious issues, the point of this piece will be to discuss the latter—“NYC-DSA’s Orientation Toward a Potential Mamdani Administration.” In brief, it seeks to orient the chapter’s activity and political program towards the “Affordability Agenda”—freezing the rent, no-cost childcare, fast and free buses—championed by Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign. Strikingly, however, it does not mention immigration or ICE, the role of the cops and other undemocratic institutions, the struggle for Palestinian liberation, or the prospect of resisting a federal Trump crackdown on New York City. By ignoring many of the most pressing venues of mass politics, this resolution sets NYC-DSA up to fail. It erodes our ability to make genuine political interventions and ultimately reveals the weakness of our political organization even as we face unprecedented growth.
First of all, this proposal circumscribes our ability to make political interventions outside of Mamdani’s bread-and-butter platform. DSA has already engaged in successful agitation around a rent freeze, free childcare, and better transit through the vessel of the Mamdani campaign. This is a remarkable achievement, and as the authors of the resolution are aware, we will require unprecedented mass support to actually win Mamdani’s platform.
If we want Mamdani to be an “organizer in chief,” as many Leftists framed the hypothetical Sanders presidency in 2020, we need a clear vision to politicize a mass base over the next 4 years. Given that funding for things like free childcare and fast and free buses are outside of the power of the Mayor’s office, our work is more complex than mere campaigning. We will need continuous political agitation, both to threaten dissenting officials in the City Council and State Assembly with electoral challenges and to educate workers around the undemocratic obstructions inherent to local government.
This resolution advocates for a political program without a vision for how it will practically transform the chapter’s work. We already agitate around Zohran’s platform, and further organizing to win these demands post-election will require stand-alone resolutions with their own work plans, budgets, and theories of organization. The resolution instead draws a circle around certain types of organizing, while leaving other aspects of DSA’s work— immigration justice, Palestinian liberation, tenant organizing, police abolition, and trans liberation—out. It is unclear from the resolution what the purpose of drawing this circle is. I support these areas of work—I can’t imagine anyone would be opposed to them—so why delineate them at all?
What the proposal leaves unstated is the dangerous reality of the affordability message. Because so many of Zohran’s signature proposals, chosen when the campaign was polling at less than one percent, are in the hands of the Governor and State Assembly, there is a significant risk that he will be castigated as a “failed mayor” by a disorganized base if he is unable to carry them out. In August 2024, I warned about this reality: “Our organization will metaphorically foot the bill for any misgovernance resulting from the difficulty of leading as a socialist in the absence of either a legislative or popular coalition to provide political support.” NYC-DSA shifted our theory of the campaign—from a long-shot agitational run to a legitimate bid to govern New York—without seriously discussing these strategic challenges.
The June primaries proved the popular legitimacy of our vision, but it still remains a distinct possibility that the forces of capital and fascism will be better-organized. Given this risk, I fail to understand why DSA would deliberately tie its entire identity to the agenda of one man, before appreciating the full stakes of governance. I do not recommend abandoning Zohran or leaving him to his own devices. But we must recognize our independent existence as a Party, beyond our ability, extraordinary as it may be, to put one of our own in Gracie Mansion. We can and should take credit for Zohran’s victories and push his agenda forward. But we should use this moment to establish ourselves as a distinct political pole, capable of leading the work of our socialists in office, not merely tailing their campaign platforms.
But there is another concerning issue with this proposal. Before any positive vision is introduced, the authors take pains to denounce any attempt to “demand accountability” from one of the most powerful executives in America:
“If we succeed in electing Zohran Mamdani, our priority will not be policing the mayor’s lapses and demanding accountability—orientations the left has adopted in moments of decline and marginality. Our priority in campaigning for a democratic socialist mayor is to expand working-class power and win material improvements in the lives of the working class. Our members must put first the project of moving and shaping a new political landscape, before the task of critique.” [Emphasis in the original.]
Ignoring the fact that this resolution does little to advance a “project of moving and shaping a new political landscape,” this is, on its face, patently absurd. For one, there is nothing New Yorkers love more than hating the mayor, no matter who occupies the office. Cynicism and frustration will be difficult to overcome as capital asserts itself against Mamdani. Surely, he will stumble in this uphill battle, perhaps gravely. Our goal as socialists should be to put politics and worker self-organization first, not pin our hopes and dreams to a high approval rating. Simply stating that we will not seek to criticize, without providing a roadmap for when and where we should, is a transparently bizarre way of doing politics.
Above all else, this paragraph reveals a crippling fear of rank-and-file DSA members actually engaging in serious political strategy as we navigate this new era. It moves with timidity and, brazenly and without evidence, suggests that public criticism is capable of toppling the administration or leading to “decline and marginality” for the Left. Zohran is already endorsed by NYC-DSA. Many of us canvass for him weekly and will joyfully navigate the new city that he helped us create. There are very few people who support him in this way who have more critiques than praises. So why are the authors of this resolution so afraid?
It may be related to some of the key issues ignored in this resolution: Palestine and public safety. This absence is shocking, given that Mamdani has been remarkably politically innovative on both issues. His calls to strip nonprofit status from IDF “charities,” his opposition to the brutalization of Palestine protestors by the NYPD, and his general willingness to put forward alternatives to cops through a Department of Public Safety are all commendable. So why the lack of mention?
Over the past year, both NYC-DSA and the national organization launched wide-reaching arms embargo campaigns that have been effective at legitimizing DSA as a leader in the Palestinian liberation movement. This resolution does not consider how this work could interface with the Mamdani campaign at all. Given the role the Zohran campaign has played in bringing our organization’s Anti-Zionist work to the masses, this is a significant omission.
Mamdani has also occasionally faltered on Palestine, with sometimes heartening results. Before the primary, Mamdani stated flatly that “Israel has a right to exist” on several occasions. DSA members and campaign volunteers, disturbed by these statements, circulated two open letters requesting a change in rhetoric. And so the campaign innovated: Mamdani clarified that “Israel has a right to exist as a state with equal rights.” While clunky, this phrasing is extremely effective at centering condemnation of Israel’s ethnostate whenever journalists try to press Zohran on the question of a “Jewish state.” Whether or not the letters themselves drove this change, it was clear that public disapproval on a key issue mattered. Members cashed in months of goodwill for a single rhetorical ask, and it worked. Our ability to openly critique strengthened the chapter and its legitimacy.
The absence of any mention of the police is similarly damning. Indeed, the resolution’s only use of the word “policing” is revealingly a reference to member political speech, and not our Party’s relationship to the actual New York Police Department. The NYPD will continue to brutalize Black New Yorkers. It absorbs five percent of the city budget and exercises massive control over city and state politics. Their organized efforts alone could derail a Mamdani mayoralty, similar to how they sabotaged David Dinkins’ tenure in the 1990s. Maintaining his popularity in the face of organized disapproval from the NYPD will require our members to organize against their power, question their utility to society, and articulate the strong abolitionist politics our communities need.
Unfortunately, Mamdani himself has made that difficult. He has hastily retreated from his previous support for defunding the police, and apologized for correctly calling the NYPD a racist institution. Although he supports them, critical planks like eliminating the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group, defunding the NYPD's communications department, and cracking down on police overtime corruption do not appear anywhere on his website or in his public safety platform. While crime is a low-salience issue compared to the 2021 mayoral election, it should be troubling that Mamdani sees what was once Left orthodoxy as a touchy subject. Is it not our job to push him towards bolder positions and back him up when he adopts them?
Of course, Mamdani has taken up police agreementism out of a fear of retaliation. The NYPD has struck, rioted, and even retaliated against the mayor’s family members over political disagreements. Zohran’s high profile, which evokes fear and anger from the right, poses a genuine risk to his life, potentially exacerbated if the police or their unions view him as a threat. Still, the response is not to be timid—but to be obstinate. If we are honest about the fact that the police are a threat to democracy, we should find new ways to push the political envelope. Hastily passing this resolution will marginalize this type of work.
Soon, the NYPD will kill another unarmed Black man over a counterfeit bill, a dodged fare, or a broken taillight. There will be another Amadou Diallo. There will be another George Floyd. There will be rallies, protests, and riots. We may believe we are in a period of quietude around police violence. But this will not last, and when it ends, we need a mayor who will be brave enough to say that more cops, more training, more money do not make us safe. If our Mayor is unwilling to speak the truth, we need to use our independence to ask: “Why not?”.
The Steering Committee of NYC-DSA is using this resolution to evade these contradictions. Instead of putting forward a vision for mass politics and political independence, the unnamed authors retreat into tut-tutting members who dare ask better of those who represent us. It is a proposal borne of cowardice and uncertainty about how to respond to a dangerous political moment. Donald Trump is preparing to go to war with New York City, and yet we choose to constrain the ways our chapter can speak about the coming crisis.
I will follow Zohran Mamdani to Hell and back—but only because I trust him to listen to the many voices of our chapter and take our democracy and our disagreements seriously. I do not think the drafters of this resolution feel the same. If critique is so dangerous, we need to be told why.
DSA’s diversity of tactics is one of our greatest strengths. Our ability to rally working people to our cause rests on providing hope for a liberatory future even when city bureaucrats grind Zohran’s agenda to a halt, or worse, if we find ourselves at odds with a Mamdani administration forced into unacceptable compromise. We need to be able to creatively respond to the coming crises, rather than single-mindedly focus on a narrow set of economic demands. Sometimes, Zohran will be wrong. He will make mistakes. Such is the fact of governance! He will inevitably be pulled to the right by institutional forces outside of his control—it’s our job to lead by example and pull him back to the left.
I have been a field lead since the beginning of this campaign, taking on the Saturday canvass in Bed-Stuy, bringing our volunteers to the same doors that will carry Eon Huntley to victory in 2026. This campaign has brought many new socialists into our work. Even those who had never heard of DSA before stick around after the shift and reflect on the time they spent having conversations with their neighbors. A few of them will talk to me about co-governance, and others will share with me their fears of Trump or the backlash Mamdani might receive in office. But many of them ask me, with seriousness, “How are we going to hold him accountable when he’s our mayor?” I tell them that this is what DSA is for. We built this campaign, and we will be the light that guides Zohran’s administration, both as we defend him from the coming onslaught and as we call on him to fight for the future we demand.
I encourage members to vote No on this resolution. It does not meet the moment.