A socialist will govern capitalism's capital — here’s what the socialists who elected him demand

A self-described “democratic socialist” will now govern New York City, capitalism's hub in America and the free world, and Just the News has obtained internal plans from the Democratic Socialists of America detailing how the NYC-DSA branch that Zohran Mamdani belongs to intends to pressure him to inject arguably extreme anti-Israel policies into the management -- and life -- of the Big Apple.

Mamdani, who defeated former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa on Tuesday, has been a longtime DSA member and leader, and he is listed as one of the group’s nine “New York State Socialists in Office.” The DSA helped Mamdani win the Democratic primary in June and the mayorality on Tuesday, but Mamdani sought to distance himself from the DSA’s socialist and revolutionary platform during the mayor’s race — something, according to Politico, the NYC branch of the socialist group gave him public cover to do.

The list of DSA demands on Mamdani

The “Socialists in Office” website says that it is a group of “DSA endorsed elected officials that works together in the New York State legislature to advance a socialist vision for working class people across our state” — and features Mamdani. A recently unearthed clip from 2023 shows Mamdani telling the DSA national conference — which he was the keynote speaker for — that “when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it has been laced by the IDF.”

Just the News obtained an internal planning document from the NYC-DSA’s Anti-War Working Group (AWWG) which shows the group has spent weeks plotting how to pressure the new Mamdani administration to carry out their socialist “demands” — including demands to push an anti-Israel agenda at New York City Hall.

The document from the group, obtained by Just the News, is titled “AWWG Palestine Policy Meeting Meeting Agenda & Notes” — and it contains the internal plans of the DSA working group. The document was obtained when a Just the News reporter used his real name to RSVP to an AWWG meeting that was listed as open to the public. 

This reporter was sent a Zoom link to join, and a Google document containing the AWWG strategy document, reproduced below, was publicly shared in the Zoom chat. The link to the document has since been disabled.

Mamdani has been supported by so-called "fact-checkers" and legacy media in denying that he is a Communist — but his oft-repeated past comments strongly contradict his denials. Mamdani is a member of the DSA, but he denies that he is a Communist.

The Mamdani campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The DSA national organization, the NYC-DSA, and the NYC-DSA AWWG all did not immediately respond to requests for comment as well.

The Anti-Israel “demands” for “Zohran administration”

The NYC-DSA’s AWWG says that it is “dedicated to countering U.S. imperialism and resisting U.S. regime-change operations and interventions in foreign wars and conflicts.”

You can read that document here:

• NYC-DSA AWWG Strategy Document

The “agenda” for the Sunday meeting included a plan to “review policy/demands document draft” and to “assign researcher/writer to each policy peace.”

The apparent anti-Israel demands for a Mamdani administration from the DSA working group included: 

• “Divest City pension funds from Israeli bonds and securities,” 

• “Withdraw City funds from banks that lend money to Israel or do business in Israel,” 

• “End City contracts with companies that do business with Israel," 

• “Operate City-run grocery stores free from Israeli products,”

• “Investigate real estate agents hosting illegal sales of stolen lands in the West Bank,” 

• “Evict weapons manufacturers and transporters from the NYC Metro Area,” 

• “Divest CUNY endowment and reinstate wrongly fired professors,” 

• “Dismantle Eric Adam’s NYC-Israel economic council,” 

• “End repression of demonstrators and the SRG [the NYPD's Strategic Response Group],” 

• “Remove non-profit status from charities that raise funds for IDF,” “End NYPD training with IOF,” and 

• “Arrest Netanyahu and active IDF soldiers for war crimes.”

The IDF is the Israeli Defense Forces, while “IOF” is an acronym for a derogatory term for the IDF, disparagingly referring to them as the “Israeli Occupation Forces.” The internal DSA working group document also included notes on prior meetings over the past couple months.

Notes from the NYC-DSA AWWG from Oct. 19 said that the “Demand/Policy document first page will list all the demands” and that it “can serve as the basis/tool for the work we want to do within DSA and outside.” The notes from that meeting also claimed that “DSA’s stance on Palestine is not strong” and that “this campaign could be a way to consolidate member support for Palestine.”

Notes from the NYC-DSA AWWG from Sept. 23 detail a “policy discussion around [a] Zohran administration.” The working group laid out “our top priorities” including a repetition of many of the aforementioned anti-Israel ideas, including arguing that “NYC/US not part of ICC but can still honor ICC warrants and arrest foreign nationals” such as Netanyahu.

The working group noted the existence of an “Anti War Policy for Zohran Signal Chat” and the notes asked “how will we implement” their desired anti-Israel agenda in NYC. 

Ideas included “track/stay active on appointments” and to “pressure him [Mamdani] to staff with people whose values are aligned.” The notes also called to “leverage Zohran campaign/canvassing infrastructure” and to argue that “electoralism in DSA is anti-imperialism because “canvassers care about Palestine, many there because of Palestine,” and so the group should “reach out to canvass leads, share these demands.”

DSA has become increasingly anti-Israel — and demands fealty from members

“Plan and push forward through conflict with political priorities,” the NYC-DSA AAWG notes said. “Make it clear to electeds that if they want our support, our priorities matter. Make the terms clear going in, public statement on 1st day. However focus on policies and actions, not statements in response to bad faith questions from press.”

The DSA’s national platform’s section on foreign policy focuses first on Palestine, saying, “Free Palestine. An immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, an end to military and economic aid, and weapons sales to Israel, respect of the authority of the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice, and national sovereignty for the Palestinian people.”

The second item on the DSA national platform calls to “End the U.S. War Machine. Greatly reduce the U.S. military budget, close overseas bases, and bring troops home.”

The DSA’s national convention in August passed a resolution “For a Fighting Anti-Zionist DSA.”

“Palestinian liberation is the moral compass of the socialist movement, representing a critical junction of popular consciousness. This resolution builds on existing expectations that our elected officials stand up for Palestine and establishes expectations for our mass membership,” the DSA’s approved resolution said. “DSA shall make organizing in solidarity with the Palestinian cause a priority until Palestine is free, unequivocally affirming our commitment to ‘al-Thawabit’, the principles originally set by the Palestinian National Council in 1977 and repeatedly reaffirmed since, which are the Palestinian people’s right to resistance, the Palestinian right to self-determination, the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine, and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland from the river to the sea.”

DSA’s Rochester chapter said that the resolution passed by a vote of 675 to 524, to an eruption of “Free, Free Palestine” chants from the crowd.

The Network Contagion Research Institute, part of the Rutgers University Miller Center, assessed that “this resolution draws a clear internal red line and signals intensifying ideological rigidity, intolerance, and radicalism around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict within the DSA” and that “these developments warrant close monitoring, both for their implications on NYC’s electoral landscape and their potential role in mainstreaming antisemitic or extremist ideological frameworks within U.S. political discourse.”

The national DSA group tweeted in September for its followers to join a protest “in Times Square as we take to the streets to demand Netanyahu’s arrest” and to “join us as we demand sanctions on Israel, enforcement of the ICC arrest warrant of Netanyahu, and call for a people’s arms embargo.”

DSA: "We will break the gears of the U.S. imperial war machine"

The national DSA criticized the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas in October.

“Our role is to end U.S. complicity in Israel’s genocide and apartheid at every level—in our communities, our government, our workplaces—with every economic and political tool at our disposal,” the socialist group said. 

It added: “We will break the gears of the US imperial war machine that enables Israel and halt the flow of arms and oil to ensure our comrades may resist their oppression, cast off the occupation and with dignity, freely self-determine their future. We proudly join together with our comrades in solidarity. Until justice is rendered for all Palestinians, the struggle for liberation continues. Solidarity Forever.”

Mamdani aligned with DSA on many anti-Israel positions

A review by Just the News has found the self-proclaimed socialist continued calling to defund the NYPD for years after the death of George Floyd in 2020 — and made his anti-Israel stance central to his opposition to the NYPD, in what many might call an out-of-touch and unproven conspiracy theory linking the NYPD to the IDF.

Mamdani has tweeted repeatedly about the need to “Defund the Police" — a position he tried to back away from when he ran for mayor this year. 

While Mamdani excused his calls to defund the New York Police Department as mere comments localized to the time period just after Floyd’s summer 2020 death, his efforts to slash the NYPD continued unabated well into 2021 and beyond, as he connected his efforts to hobble the police department to his strong anti-Israel views.

The Democratic mayoral nominee also called to dissolve the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group as recently as December 2024, just as the NYC-DSA AWWG has demanded.

Mamdani tweeted at the time that “as Mayor, I will disband the SRG, which has cost taxpayers millions in lawsuit settlements + brutalized countless New Yorkers exercising their first amendment rights.”

"In asking the members of that unit to respond to protests, as opposed to what was the stated reason, is a decision that has led to the violation of a number of New Yorkers' civil rights, and it's a decision that has been the basis of my critique of the use of the group towards that end," Mamdani said on CBS News this summer.

Arrest Netanyahu, divest city funds from Israeli investments

Mamdani also told former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan in December 2024 that “as mayor, New York City would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu.”

Mamdani also reportedly told CBS News in September that “we should not have a fund that invests in violations of international law” and that “the current comptroller’s approach, as he applied it with Israeli bonds, is the right approach.” In January 2023, outgoing City Comptroller Brad Lander ended New York City’s decades-long practice of investing in Israeli government bonds.

“The most important thing is to understand where we are directly implicated within the city pension fund,” Mamdani reportedly said. 

“A pension fund that purchases Israeli bonds, in my view, is clearly an indication of a conflict with our values, and we know that our values are actually within the framework of international law,” Mamdani proclaimed.

DSA helps Mamdani win the primary — and the general

The NYC-DSA immediately endorsed Mamdani for mayor — as it had endorsed him for his state assembly runs — arguing that “New York City has continually been pushed to the right by establishment democrats like Governor Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams. NYC-DSA endorsed Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani is here to bring New Yorkers back to the left.”

“NYC-DSA has endorsed Zohran Mamdani for mayor. We hope you’ll make it to upcoming events to elect a socialist mayor!” the NYC-DSA endorsement page for Mamdani says. “We need YOU to get your neighbors out to vote for Zohran! Our movement has to win big on November 4th to have the strength to pass our affordability agenda. Sign up for our final stretch shifts now and we'll send you where we need the most help.”

The NYC-DSA endorsement page for Mamdani also includes Mamdani’s “Socialism Explained in One Minute” video from 2020.

The national DSA organization celebrated Mamdani’s win in June. “In New York City, socialism has won,” the national socialist group said, attacking “the capitalist class” and arguing that “the election results are a rejection of the Democratic Party political establishment and point to a widespread desire for an alternative to the status quo, and the need for the working-class political party DSA is building.”

The NYC-DSA tweeted in late October that “we believe in our power as workers to control the means of production and outnumber the capitalist class.” The group also tweeted late last month that it “is proud to have endorsed Zohran from day one, and to have helped build a campaign that engaged tens of thousands of volunteers and knocked over one million doors.” The group was promoting its planned victory watch parties, and added that “Zohran’s vision of an affordable New York City has ignited a movement — and it’s almost time to celebrate.”

Jeremy Corbyn, a former UK Labour Party member of Parliament who was expelled from leadership over multiple anti-Semitism accusations, tweeted over the weekend that “I’m hosting a phone bank” with the NYC-DSA to “Get Out The Vote” for Mamdani, adding, “Let’s get Zohran over the finish line for a New York that’s affordable for all!”

The NYC-DSA shared Corbyn’s tweet and said, “Join us.”

Mamdani seeks to create an appearance of distance between himself and DSA 

Mamdani told reporters in August that “my platform is not the same as national DSA.” When asked if he wanted to eliminate misdemeanor criminal offenses as the DSA platform calls for, Mamdani said, “No. … You can’t find that on my platform, because it’s not there.”

Mamdani spokesperson Dora Pekec told The New York Times that “if Zohran has not publicly endorsed or spoken on a position during the campaign, it is not a part of his mayoral platform.”

Grace Mausser, the co-chairwoman of the NYC-DSA, told the Times that “New York City DSA and Zohran share a commitment to making our city more affordable for working people, but that doesn’t mean that Zohran adopts every single position that New York City DSA or DSA national has taken. Zohran’s been really clear that his platform and DSA’s platform are distinct.”

Mausser told Politico in October that “of course, there will be instances where we disagree. Zohran’s administration is not the same as NYC-DSA — we know that.”

“We really want to put our energy into what we can build together with the power of a mayoral administration and the power of not only DSA but of a broad left-labor coalition,” the NYC-DSA leader said. “I think we have the opportunity to really transform the city in ways that haven’t been seen before.”

Mausser added: “There is a real discussion within DSA, and I’m sure within Zohran’s campaign, about the ways in which our collaboration will look similar to when Zohran was in the Assembly and the ways it will look very different. … It’s about changing the constraints, and that is what DSA is dedicated to. We want to create the conditions and pressure so that Hochul changes her mind about the political feasibility of taxing the rich. And that changes, too, Zohran’s challenges and what compromises he might have to make.”

The outlet reported that “a resolution penned by the local DSA’s steering committee and approved by 80 percent of the membership clarified the organization’s posture toward a potential Mamdani mayoralty.”

“We must grow the size of our movement across every borough and every neighborhood such that we have the numbers and power to serve as an effective outside ally to a potential Zohran Mamdani administration, not primarily to elect a target for ourselves,” the NYC-DSA resolution reportedly stated.

The outlet reported that a “previous draft” of the resolution, which was subsequently revised, had said that “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.”

Pekec, the Mamdani spokesperson, told the outlet that “DSA has been an essential partner for Zohran Mamdani in powering this campaign, and he looks forward to working with them to deliver a more affordable city and continue to engage more New Yorkers in the political process.”

Mamdani the socialist — and Communist — will take the reins in NYC

After the primary win by Mamdani in June, President Donald Trump weighed in by declaring Mamdani “a 100% Communist Lunatic.”

Mamdani told Meet the Press that month that “no, I am not” a Communist, saying that “I have already had to start to get used to the fact that the president will talk about how I look, how I sound, where I'm from, who I am, ultimately, because he wants to distract from what I'm fighting for.”

Mamdani on "seizing the means of production" and other Marxist tropes

An investigation by Just the News showed that in tweets, speeches, and affiliations, Mamdani, at his core, holds a strong affinity for traditional Stalinesque Communism: praising and campaigning with a Marxist state senator in New York; declaring that NYC needed a mayor just like a famously young Indian mayor who was a member of an explicitly Marxist and Communist Party; praising the 1917 Russian Revolution which led to the establishment of the Soviet Union at the cost of millions of lives; arguing to “seize the means of production” in a reference to a core Marxist principle; praising famous radical Communist figures; and much more.

Mamdani spoke of “the end goal of seizing the means of production” in 2021 while he was a New York state assemblyman.

Mamdani declared his affinity for seizing the means of production during a Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) winter conference in February 2021. The full context of the quote shows that Mamdani was attempting to stress how serious he was about that affinity.

“I wanted to make sure to say is that when we — when our position starts to change, when we start to accumulate power, when we start to elect individuals such as myself and my slate mates into local office, we are started to be treated in a different way than we used to be,” Mamdani said at the conference. “And the way in which power engages us now is very critical for all of us to remember what it is that we are fighting for, and to remember that our agenda is an agenda that must not be dictated by calculus, but by conviction.”

Mamdani continued: “[T]here are other issues which we firmly believe in, whether it is BDS [Boycott, Divest, and Sanction], right, or whether it is the end goal of seizing the means of production, where we do not have the same level of support at this very moment. And what I want to say is that it is critical in the way that we organize, the way that we set up our work and our priorities, that we do not leave any one issue for the other, that we do not meet a moment and only look at what people are ready for, but that we are doing both of these things in tandem.”

Mamdani has repeatedly praised his fellow “comrades” in the DSA, and seems to have been especially close with New York state Sen. Julia Salazar, who endorsed him and with whom he campaigned during his 2020 run for the New York state assembly, and whom he also praised and thanked for her endorsement when he was running for mayor in 2025.

Salazar is, like Mamdani, a self-described “Democratic Socialist” and she has repeatedly declared that she is an avowed Marxist. Mamdani made it clear in 2020 that he was well aware of Salazar’s Marxist views — and strongly suggested he agreed with them.

Mamdani also repeatedly tweeted his praise for the radical far-left Black Panther leader and noted Marxist and Black Panther, Fred Hampton. Hampton, the charismatic Black Panther leader was killed in his sleep at age 21 by Chicago law enforcement agents and the FBI. In January 1970, the Cook County Coroner held an inquest; the coroner's jury concluded that Hampton death wa "justifiable homicide."

Bragged of being a Communist before communism was cool

Mamdani also shared a humorous tweet about Communism which still hinted at his affinity for it. “Most people: DSA’s rebirth happened in 2016 bc [because] of Bernie’s first run and the beginning of the Trump era,” Mamdani tweeted in September 2022. “Real ones: It was in 2009 when Lil’ Wayne said ‘I’m down like the economy’ while wearing a shirt that says COMMUNIST in the Down music video.”

Mamdani hasn’t just used the “Comrade” moniker for his Marxist ally Julia Salazar, but it is rather a term of endearment he repeatedly uses with his fellow DSA members and allies.

The term “comrade” has a long — but not exclusive — association with Communist movements. Soviet Union dictator Joseph Stalin was referred to as “Comrade Stalin” and Chinese Communist Party dictator Mao Zedong called himself “Comrade Mao” — among many such examples. When Mamdani spoke at the YDSA winter conference in February 2021, he referred to the other elected socialist officials as his “comrades.”

An old habit: Promising free stuff in return for votes

By Mamdani’s own admission, his philosophy of running on a platform of providing free things in exchange for votes dates back to at least his time at the elite Bronx High School of Science.

“I made a rap song to run for vice president — ultimately an unsuccessful one. … I promised things that were simply [...] I promised fresh juice for everyone every day using locally-sourced fruits. There was a supermarket like four minutes away,” Mamdani said on the AirGo podcast in May 2017. “I promised credits for going to after-school games instead of having to go to gym [...] For just going to the games, I said that would serve as credits.”

Mamdani admitted, though, that his rival “whooped my ass in that election.” This time around, his socialist agenda — and his apparently successful efforts to minimize or convince New Yorkers to ignore his Communist leanings — have put him in charge of America’s largest city, and what is, at least for now, the capitalism capital of the world.