Mamdani’s Office of Mass Engagement Wields Hefty Budget To Promote Democratic Socialist Agenda

As Mayor Mamdani populates the ranks of New York City’s agencies with members of his Democratic Socialist coalition, the newly empowered Office of Mass Engagement is touting a tenant organizing strategy that resembles both union organizing and a voter registration drive.The latest project, “Talk to Tenants,” seeks to build tenant associations to challenge landlords in buildings “with a history of housing violations and neglect.” The project aims to enlist volunteers to canvas neighbors and connect tenants to tenant associations to “hold landlords accountable.” “An organized tenant is a protected tenant,” the city’s website beams.“It’s also a great way to get to know the neighbors so when things happen in your building, you know you have each other’s back,” says one of the community organizers, Cea Weaver, featured in a video released over the weekend by Mr. Mamdani. “Ultimately, we think it’s the tenants’ power that is going to make a big difference here.”The two individuals in Mr. Mamdani’s promotional video, Ms. Weaver and Tascha Van Auken, are longtime DSA leaders. Ms. Van Auken, one of Mr. Mamdani’s advisers during his campaign, is now head of the mayor’s Office of Mass Engagement, which is responsible for operating a $53 million budget and its “Organize NYC” programming. Ms. Weaver is the director of the mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants. Both positions are new and reflect Mr. Mamdani’s interest in appointing a diverse crowd of officials, including several progressives who graduated from the offices of the former mayor, Bill de Blasio, and Senator Bernie Sanders, while saving key slots, including his chief of staff and racial justice and housing authorities, for DSA members.The latest project of Organize NYC — an initiative launched by the mayor in May and advertised on the city’s website — contains a series of populist objectives for the administration. It follows implementation of rent freezes approved by the Rent Guidelines Board in June and several town hall events for bus riders. Another program aims to educate volunteers on how they “can shape government.” While the goals sound innocuous enough, critics of the mayor’s agenda suggest that Organize NYC and its leadership are a thin cover for a larger DSA agenda that includes not only policy but politicking. The DSA agenda, a three-part roadmap, includes such seemingly innocuous platform positions such as paid family leave, free education, a “livable” minimum wage, and public financing of elections. Other goals include a 32-hour work week, elimination of prisons, defunding of police departments, reparations for native and black Americans, and “queer liberation” through “bodily autonomy,” gender expression, and an end to capitalism. The agenda also contains more revolutionary planks, including abolishing the Senate, the Electoral College, and the Department of Defense and subordinating the Supreme Court and the presidency to Congress. The Republican nominee for state comptroller, Joseph Hernandez, warns that Mr. Mamdani’s Organize NYC campaign is a “DSA Machine” disguised as taxpayer-funded public works project. “This isn’t engagement. It’s a campaign operation moved from Mamdani’s war chest onto the city budget, and Van Auken has already said (the rent guidelines board) was only the first target,” Mr. Hernandez wrote on X. “Next up: likely City Council budget fights, taxation, landlord regulations, or police oversight, whatever serves the DSA agenda.”“When I’m Comptroller, I will audit this office,” he added, suggesting that the Office of Mass Engagement may violate conflict-of-interest rules and the state’s law that bars public servants from using their position for political or private benefit.Since Mr. Mamdani’s election, the DSA has undoubtedly gained both financially and in influence, most notably in New York City. At the time of his primary victory, the DSA had about 75,000 dues-paying members nationwide, according to New York reporter Peter Sterne. Since then, it has grown to nearly 129,000, with the New York chapter boasting the largest membership at 15,800. The chapter hosts as many as a dozen activities daily, from coffee klatches and running clubs to political organizing seminars and training sessions on interactions with ICE, “tech oligarchy,” and anti-war organizing, among other topics.Membership funds the DSA’s operations, with the organization reporting $6.38 million in revenues in 2024, the most recent filing year. The nonprofit arm of the organization used for raising political capital through youth education and organizing events, the DSA Fund, claimed just over $683,000 in its 2024 tax return. On the other hand, the Democratic Socialists of America Political Action Committee, responsible for campaign finance reports, reported to the Federal Election Commission that it has raised just $118.22 this calendar year. That may be soon changing. The DSA reportedly just won a court settlement in an inheritance case of a deceased New York University professor who had bequeathed his $5.2 million estate to the New American Movement, which transformed into the DSA in 1982. That’s more than 80 percent of its 2024 largesse.A New York City councilwoman, Vickie Paladino, notes that New American Movement was an offshoot of the Students for a Democratic Society, a Marxist organization from the 1970s, some of whose members — rehabilitated during the era of President Obama — participated in domestic terrorism. The SDS served as the progenitor of the New American Movement, Ms. Palladino observes. “There is a straight line between today’s DSA and SDS, the Weathermen, and the domestic terrorism that wracked the country for years,” she wrote on X. “Now they just got a five million dollar cash infusion courtesy of a radical NYU professor.”With the newfound power and budget, many eyes will be watching the Office of Mass Engagement to ensure that it lives up to the mayor’s stated principles to create a more affordable New York without succumbing to the usual lures of power, most notably, money, or to the DSA’s stated goals of undoing America’s representative democracy. The pressure is already mounting.“Mass Engagement was nowhere to be found when New Yorkers should have been told a 6% water rate hike was on the table. Very convenient to stay silent so residents wouldn’t show up to testify before the Water Board,” said Councilman Phil Wong, a moderate Democrat who recently filed an ethics complaint over Mr. Mamdani’s alleged over use of city vehicles to support DSA candidates during the primary season. “So much for “‘mass engagement.’” So much for “‘affordability,’” he wrote on X.

Mamdani’s Office of Mass Engagement Wields Hefty Budget To Promote Democratic Socialist Agenda

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