DSA Civil War Breaks Open as Rival Accuses Chelsea Organizer of Trying To Buy Votes To Block Public Housing Overhaul

One of the Democratic Socialist delegates elected to represent Lower Manhattan at next month’s state chapter convention is being accused of orchestrating a campaign to sign up nonsocialists to the party so her bloc can vote its opposition to a housing redevelopment plan in her neighborhood.Organizer Layla Law-Gisiko secured a seat at the New York chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America’s upcoming convention on November 14 as part of the World To Win caucus, a hard left coalition of delegates that won 30 percent of the delegate seats in party voting that ended on Sunday.Ms. Law-Gisiko ran as part of the “Stop the Demolition” subslate, which wants to halt the city’s planned demolition of two projects on the west side of Manhattan’s tony Chelsea neighborhood that would clear the way for newer and more subsidized housing. World To Win was second only to the DSA’s mainline Socialist Majority, which secured 35 percent of delegate seats at the convention. Now, fellow DSA members are accusing Ms. Law-Gisiko of conducting a campaign to infiltrate the party to block the planned redevelopment and enlargement of the Fulton and Eliott-Chelsea Houses. Under the city’s current plan overseen in the Adams administration and continued into Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s, 2,056 city-owned and Housing Authority-run apartments are to be demolished. The projects will be replaced with a new, expanded development to be owned and managed through a public-private partnership between the city and developer Related Companies, which was behind another Chelsea skyscraper project, Hudson Yards. Proponents say the current plan will provide the current residents with improved accommodations while increasing housing stock by 3,000 units in a desirable neighborhood. Opponents such as Ms. Law-Gisiko argue construction will destroy the community by displacing residents for years. The switch from public housing governed by Section 9 of the Housing Act to voucher-based rent subsidies will also leave low-income residents less protected, Ms. Law-Gisiko’s faction contends, as they will be forced to navigate relations with a profit-motivated private landlord, thereby driving up homelessness.Ms. Law-Gisiko’s bid to sway the DSA — and thus, crucially, its representatives in city government, including Mr. Mamdani — against the planned public housing overhaul took a bizarre turn this week when DSA member Danny Valdes posted images he says were pulled from an email blast he received calling on non-socialists — regardless of their politics or, seemingly, addresses — to join the DSA and vote for Ms. Law-Gisiko’s slate.“We need your help TODAY! Two simple steps will go a long way in stopping the demolition of Chelsea’s Public Housing,” reads the alleged email. The mailer then explains how to join the DSA online and dial back the annual dues to $2 rather than the suggested $25. “Also, if you don’t live in Lower Manhattan -please change your branch to the LowMan (Lower Manhattan) branch so that you can vote for the Stop the Demolition Slate,” the email in question reads.“I’m all for organizing but recruiting neighbors to buy a $2 vote to pack our convention is just entryism and an affront to our member democracy,” Mr. Valdes wrote in a post accompanying the pictures.Mr. Valdes and Ms. Law-Gisiko both announced runs for the City Council District 3 seat in a special election earlier this year. Mr. Valdes dropped out in January while Ms. Law-Gisiko lost in a crowded Democratic primary.Mr. Valdes’s posts set off something of a firestorm on social media, where users responded by firing off accusations against Ms. Law-Gisiko for being an equestrian, owning a penthouse apartment and several additional units, and appearing at a press conference last year to oppose charter revisions that ultimately passed, clearing the way for the Mayor’s Office to go around the City Council to approve new housing developments.However, Ms. Law-Gisiko’s worst offense, according to critics on X, may have been standing too close to perennial Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa and rightwing Councilmember Vickie Paladino as she spoke at the presser. Ms. Law-Gisiko found herself labeled “a wealthy right-wing homeowner whose activism has ulterior motives,” and is a “litmus test” for the party. “Answer this question: as socialism grows as a political force, do you think we’ll work more or less with people like Nithya Raman and Layla Law-Gisiko?” the editor of communist review Geese Magazine, PK Gandakin, wrote on X, placing Ms. Law-Gisiko in the same category as the controversial DSA candidate in the Los Angeles mayor’s race. The former co-chairwoman of the New York City chapter of Young Democratic Socialists of America and Ms. Law-Gisiko’s fellow delegate to the upcoming conference, Giovanetta Marangoz, also framed her as an interloper.“What I think is a good question about the Layla Law Gisiko stuff is that it seems like a given, due to our growth,” Ms. Marangoz wrote on X. “Many incoherent or even malicious personalities will and do want to come in. What I am interested in is: how do we filter them without backdoor groups or purges?”Ms. Law-Gisiko rejected the accusations about her motives and her politics in a lengthy statement offered before voting ended in the delegate election. “I am astonished by the amount of leisure time some people enjoy. Endless tweets. Years of lame opposition research. Archaeological expeditions through other people’s political histories,” she wrote. “I, unfortunately, am rather busy fighting multibillion-dollar corporations seeking to take over our neighborhoods and displace working-class communities. Imagine if all that industriousness were directed at the voracious real estate industry.”Ms. Law-Gisiko did not answer questions about the mailer directing people to join the DSA and register in Lower Manhattan. Mr. Valdes and The New York City DSA did not respond to requests for comment.Questions like those raised about Ms. Law-Gisiko’s candidacy stand to become more frequent in a party challenged by the need to grow but committed to purity politics. Ahead of the party’s internal elections and the midterms, New York City DSA membership has reportedly jumped 23 percent to more than 18,500 from 15,000 in the space of a few weeks in September and October, according to figures first reported by journalist Peter Sterne.Approximately 6,200 members voted in the delegate election, though just 770 represented Lower Manhattan. The city DSA did not respond to inquiries about membership growth within its Lower Manhattan local unit ahead of the election, but each member of the Stop the Demolition slate won a seat. Housing advocate Ramona Ferreyra, a former DSA member who left the organization and founded her own nonprofit, Save Section 9, after finding the party unresponsive to the needs of public housing residents, told The New York Sun that she rejoined ahead of the election “because of the nasty exchanges surrounding the anti-demolition and privatization slate.” She rejoined “not because I believe in the organization, but because I believe socialist policies must be shaped by the people who live with their consequences,” Ms. Ferreyra said. “DSA must become accountable to the communities it claims to represent.”Getting the Stop the Demolition candidates into the convention was “a preliminary win,” Ms. Ferreyra said. “The real test is what happens next: Will DSA organize alongside working-class communities and advance solutions rooted in lived experience or will it continue to prioritize its own internal politics and Zohran’s commitments to big real estate?”Ms. Law-Gisiko will be among the 435 delegates at next month’s DSA convention at an as-yet-undisclosed location at Midtown Manhattan. Holding a plurality of votes, the World To Win slate, whose eight Stop the Demolition candidates include three tenants of the Fulton and Eliott-Chelsea House buildings set for demolition along with five other advocates including Ms. Law-Gisiko will have to negotiate support from the leading Socialist Majority caucus and others to win concessions on platform planks that may not align. The Socialist Majority’s top agenda item, for instance, is securing the chapter’s endorsement for Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s presidential campaign in 2028 followed by reforming its candidate selection and mass campaign strategies. World To Win’s platform leads with more modest calls to hold endorsed candidates accountable to DSA principles and make the chapter’s budget more transparent.The delegates will also hear resolutions introduced by prominent party members, including Councilmember Chi Ossé and New York City DSA chapter co-chairman Gustavo Gordillo, a millionaire’s son from Miami who passed himself off as union electrician before being unmasked. His proposal, viewed by the Sun, calls to “prioritize building new Black and Latino electorates for Democratic Socialist politics, just as we helped do with South Asian and Muslim voters in 2025” around a potential DSA presidential candidate for 2028.

DSA Civil War Breaks Open as Rival Accuses Chelsea Organizer of Trying To Buy Votes To Block Public Housing Overhaul

DSA Civil War Breaks Open as Rival Accuses Chelsea Organizer of Trying To Buy Votes To Block Public Housing Overhaul

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