There’s no hiding now.
Zohran Mamdani — a proud, card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America — has been shying away from some of his fringe party’s agenda as he runs for mayor.
But newly-unearthed platforms from the DSA’s New York City chapter paint a shocking picture of the extreme shift toward radical policies the Big Apple could face if Mamdani is elected in November.
The NYC-DSA manifesto — which was scrubbed from its website in late 2021 and discovered by The Post through Internet archives — lays out how the group aims to “dismantle and move beyond” America’s capitalist society and create a “wholesale socialist transformation of our national and global economy.”
Some of the socialist group’s agenda has already been plucked by Mamdani for his insurgent campaign — including promising city-run grocery stores, free buses and increased public funding for hormone therapy and surgery for transgender people.
And since he trounced ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the June Democratic primary, Mamdani has parroted even more of the NYC-DSA’s most recent dogma, including defending the decriminalization of prostitution and saying he supports ending mayoral control over city public schools.
When asked in detail about each of the planks on Thursday, Mamdani’s campaign refused to say whether he still ascribes to the values of the DSA, which he joined in 2017.
“Zohran’s affordability agenda is crystal clear: if Zohran has not publicly endorsed or spoken on a position during the campaign, it is not a part of his mayoral platform,” said Mamdani campaign spokesperson Dora Pekec.
She pointed to public comments Mamdani — who was elected to the state Assembly as a member of NYC-DSA in 2019 — made Thursday saying, “My platform is not the same as national DSA or any DSA organization.”
But Mamdani has not always rejected DSA stances that he has not publicly endorsed himself.
For example, the DSA calls for legalizing all sex work. While Mamdani does not include that in his own public platform, he said that he supports former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s approach — which decriminalized prostitution.
The campaign also referred The Post to the co-chair of NYC-DSA, who was quick to say that “Zohran’s platform and DSA’s platform are distinct.”
“NYC-DSA and Zohran share a relentless commitment to making our City more affordable for everyday people. Those shared values do not mean Zohran adopts every position the organization has taken,” said Gustavo Gordillo.
“NYC-DSA remains proud to endorse Zohran.”
Gordillo refused to say why the agenda was wiped from NYC-DSA’s website.
The campaign appears to be trying to avoid the controversial topics while Mamdani courts the New York City business and real estate communities, as well as the Democratic establishment.
Local Dem bigwigs, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Gov. Kathy Hochul, have yet to endorse the party’s nominee for mayor.
Prior to his stunning upset in the primary, Mamdani was already an influential member of the socialist movement, nabbing a keynote speaker spot at the group’s national convention in 2023.
He has since become the new face of the DSA nationwide as he cozies up with New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
When pressed this week on one of the extreme agenda items from the national DSA sect — eliminating all misdemeanor crimes — Mamdani’s campaign insisted the NYPD would continue to prosecute such offenses if he’s elected.
The campaign stopped short of fully disavowing the DSA’s radical stance, but tried to distance itself from it by arguing the national sect doesn’t represent the ideals backed by the local New York City chapter.
Turns out, one of the key proposals spelled out in the NYC-DSA’s agenda includes calls for the decriminalization of all drugs, sex work and petty crimes, such as trespassing, disorderly conduct and fare jumping.
The NYC-DSA’s platform also seeks to immediately expunge the records of anyone convicted of those crimes and release them from jail if still serving their sentence.
Below are the policy platforms from the NYC-DSA and what Mamdani has said about them:
DECRIMINALIZE ALL DRUGS, ALL PRETTY CRIMES AND ALL WORK
What NYC-DSA says:
- Decriminalize all recreational drugs immediately and direct resources wasted on the drug war towards public health. Fully legalize marijuana for adult use with appropriate regulation to ensure that the industry benefits communities harmed by the drug war and does not become a capitalist enterprise. All drug war prisoners must be released.
- Address the opioid epidemic and other substance abuse issues as public health problems—not crimes—through a harm-reduction model that includes measures such as safe injection sites and the wide availability of Narcan.
- Decriminalize all petty offenses immediately — particularly “crimes of poverty” like fare-jumping and sleeping on the subway. Repeal the gravity knife law.
What Mamdani says:
- His campaign said on background that the NYPD will enforce all misdemeanor crimes if he’s elected, but did not comment on the record.
LET OUT PEOPLE JAILED FOR DRUGS, SEX WORK, OTHER MINORS
What NYC-DSA says:
- Expunge all convictions of drug crimes, sex work, and petty offenses and immediately release all who are incarcerated for such crimes.
What Mamdani says:
STOP ALL PROSECUTIONS FOR DRUGS AND SEX WORK
What NYC-DSA says:
- Immediately stop all prosecutions for drug crimes, sex work, and petty offenses in advance of action from Albany on decriminalization.
What Mamdani says:
CHANGE YOUTHFUL OFFENDER TO 26
What NYC-DSA says:
- Change the use of “youthful offender” prosecutions to enable young adults up to age 26 to be kept out of the criminal justice system whenever possible.
What Mamdani says:
ABOLISH PRETRIAL DETENTION AND CASH BAIL
What NYC-DSA says:
- Abolish routine pretrial detention and cash bail. The abolition of cash bail must not result in added invasive surveillance or flawed algorithms that perpetuate the injustices of cash bail in neoliberal metrics.
What Mamdani says:
- Backed bail reform and was critical of Gov. Hochul’s rollbacks as a state assemblyman.
CLOSE RIKERS ISLAND BUT OPEN NO NEW JAILS OR PRISONS
What NYC-DSA says:
- Close Rikers immediately and demand that no new jails be built in its place. The jail population must be immediately reduced to the lowest possible level.
- Ensure that reductions in the incarceration rate result in prison closures. No new prisons should be built.
What Mamdani says:
- Has vowed to close Rikers, but made no mention of stopping borough-based jails. Instead, he has said the need to work with DAs to release people pretrial or divert them from the criminal justice system altogether, and that the city needs to invest more in alternatives to jail.
DISMANTLE CCRB AND REPLACE WITH ELECTED BOARD
What NYC-DSA says:
- Replace the toothless, unaccountable Civilian Complaint Review Board with an Elected Civilian Review Board empowered to prosecute police misconduct. Institute other measures that empower direct community control of the police, such as a community board.
What Mamdani says:
GANG DATABASE
What NYC-DSA says:
- Discontinue the use of gang databases.
What Mamdani says:
- Mamdani, during the primary, called for the NYPD tool to be dismantled.
HALL MONITORS FOR COPS
What NYC-DSA says:
- Implement use of civil liberties supervisors in police precincts.
What Mamdani says:
ALLOW ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS TO VOTE AND RUN FOR OFFICE
What NYC-DSA says:
- Grant state citizenship to all New Yorkers.
- Expand the right to vote in local and state elections to all New Yorkers, and the ability to hold political office, regardless of immigration status.
What Mamdani says:
ANTI-ICE AND EXPANSION OF SANCTUARY
What NYC-DSA says:
- Extend and expand sanctuary protections across New York State to end cooperation between state and local law enforcement with ICE; prevent local state agencies from collecting or sharing an individual’s immigration information with federal agencies; ban state and local resources from being used to aid federal immigration enforcement; and guarantee access and provision of legal counsel to undocumented immigrants facing deportation.
- End the carveouts to detainer request limits and immigration legal counsel by guaranteeing sanctuary protections regardless of criminal charges.
- Increase funding for—and guarantee permanent funding for—immigration legal counsel by amending the Department of State’s mission to ensure renewed funding.
- Restrict ICE access inside and outside New York State court houses for the purpose of detaining immigrants, and end court officer cooperation with ICE.
- Prevent state and local law enforcement agencies from stopping, investigating, or arresting a person based on perceived immigration status or suspected violation of federal immigration law.
- Require state and local agencies and their employees to maintain the confidentiality of immigration status information unless the individual has given consent or unless required by federal law.
What Mamdani says:
- He has vowed to resist ICE.
Decertify banks that contract with, or fund, ICE
What NYC-DSA says:
- Decertify banks that contract with, or fund, ICE.
- End state and local contracts with companies that contract with DHS and ICE and share data with ICE.
What Mamdani says:
NO NEW CHARTER SCHOOLS
What NYC-DSA says:
- End the creation of new charter schools, ban the expansion of existing charter schools, and transform existing charter schools into public schools.
What Mamdani says:
- “I oppose efforts by the state to mandate an expansion of charter school operations in New York City,” he said previously.
REMOVE COPS FROM SCHOOLS
What NYC-DSA says:
- End the use of police and school safety officers in schools.
What Mamdani says:
PRO TEACHER POLICIES
What NYC-DSA says:
- End teacher evaluations on the basis of standardized testing.
- Guarantee tenure, due process rights, pensions, and an immediate end to the arbitrary denial of tenure to probationary teachers.
What Mamdani says:
DEI SCHOOLING AGENDA
What NYC-DSA says:
- Allocate funding for curricula relevant to the communities of the school and oriented towards racial and social justice, working-class and labor history, LGBTQ+ studies, multilingual education and immersion, and vocational training.
What Mamdani says:
END MAYORAL CONTROL
What NYC-DSA says:
- End mayoral control over school governance and establish community school boards directly elected by the public to bring our schools under popular and democratic control.
What Mamdani says:
- While no detailed education plan has been released, this is part of Mamdani’s official platform.
REPARATIONS
What NYC-DSA says:
- Build support for reparations and pass legislation like the “Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act.” Coming out of the commission, we would want budget lines for reparations at municipal, state, and federal levels.
- Support reparations for Native American and Black communities.
What Mamdani says:
- “New York City actively participated in the slave trade; it should reconcile and repair this legacy,” he said during the Dem primary race.
ALLOW MINORS TO TRANSITION WITHOUT PARENTAL CONSENT
What NYC-DSA says:
- Allow trans minors access to transition related care without parental consent.
What Mamdani says:
HORMONE THERAPY/SURGERY
What NYC-DSA says:
- Expand public funding medical care for resources for transgender/gender non-conforming people, including hormone therapy and surgery
What Mamdani says:
- Mamdani has included this as part of his official campaign agenda.
MAKE ALL PUBLIC TRANSIT FREE
What NYC-DSA says:
- Guarantee a right to free, clean, quality public transportation by fully funding, repairing and expanding the deteriorating New York public transit system and ultimately abolishing fares. Expansions should prioritize service into underserved communities, including bus rapid transit and light rail, and unify transit and payment systems.
What Mamdani says:
- He has called for free buses.
CITY-RUN FOOD STORES
What NYC-DSA says:
- Expand existing public food programs and municipal food purchasing and ensure purchases are from farms that protect farmworkers rights and utilize regenerative and sustainable practices, including in urban farms, and eliminate food waste, all to decarbonize and ensure access to healthy food.
What Mamdani says:
- This has been a key pillar of Mamdani’s campaign.
CITY TAKE OVER OF UTILITIES/TECH INFRASTRUCTURE
What NYC-DSA says:
- Collectively Owned Technology: Municipalize existing network infrastructure and utilities where possible.
What Mamdani says:
- He ran for assemblyman on a platform of publicly-owned utilities
ABOLISH BOARDS OF ELECTIONS
What NYC-DSA says:
- Abolish The New York State and New York City Boards of Elections, which are poster children for self-dealing major party control, and build new, nonpartisan institutions in their place that aim to serve and enfranchise all New York voters and candidates.
What Mamdani says:
UNIVERSAL RENT CONTROL
What NYC-DSA says:
- Pass Universal Rent Control.
- The New York State legislature must strengthen and expand rent stabilization to cover all apartments, regardless of building size, age, or location.
What Mamdani says:
SEIZE LAND FOR HOUSING
What NYC-DSA says:
- Encourage the city to take eminent domain actions to create more affordable and de-commodified housing.
What Mamdani says:
