Mayor Zohran Mamdani held a major town hall meeting Thursday evening in Brooklyn about improving bus service, one of his signature campaign issues.<\/p>\n
At the event, the mayor\u2019s political allies, the Democratic Socialists of America, set up a table alongside transit experts and city agency staff.<\/p>\n
A leading good-government group found it to be an inappropriate mix of politics and government.<\/p>\n
\u201cI found it to be a shocking image, frankly,\u201d Grace Rauh, director of Citizens Union, said. \u201cEvery one of us who was involved at all in politics in any way, shape or form knows that the DSA is primarily a political organizing shop.\u201d<\/p>\n
Norman Siegel, a civil rights lawyer, said it\u2019s the first time he\u2019s seen something like this.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the DSA received quote, \u2018the favorite status position,\u2019 that would be not appropriate,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it\u2019s important and especially raises the question in the background of the mayor himself and his relationship to the DSA.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mayor Mamdani\u2019s spokeswoman, Dora Pekec, said DSA members were not there for politics, but rather, their subject-matter expertise. Those in attendance were part of the organization\u2019s transit working group, akin to Transportation Alternatives or Riders Alliance.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese organizations provided a variety of resources and perspectives on transit advocacy for New Yorkers,\u201d Pekec said.<\/p>\n
The difference, however, between the DSA and those transit groups is that the DSA is officially a social welfare organization \u2014 a 501(c)(4) in the IRS code. Its members can lobby and engage in politics, \u201cso long as that is not its primary activity,\u201d according to the IRS website.<\/p>\n
The DSA is also officially not a political party.<\/p>\n
Gustavo Gordillo, co-chair of the New York City chapter of the DSA, said in a statement that the DSA does extensive community organizing and social welfare work.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were one of many non-profit community organizations that tabled at the event with the goal of giving New Yorkers the tools to fight for a stronger bus system \u2014 our area of expertise,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Mamdani\u2019s conservative critics say it crossed a red line.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are just making it all-inclusive, which is very Marxist. It comes out of the theory of Communism,\u201d Councilwoman Vickie Paladino, a Queens Republican, said. \u201cYou kind of blend together government and politics as one.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt just seems to me that they\u2019re still getting special treatment and I think we have to talk about a higher standard,\u201d Councilman David Carr, the Council Republican leader, said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mayor Zohran Mamdani held a major town hall meeting Thursday evening in Brooklyn about improving bus service, one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":316485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[109,25,13408,75,84,83,9,24,12,63,87,27,200],"class_list":["post-316484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-top-stories","tag-dan-rivoli","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-politics","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=316484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/316484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/316485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=316484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=316484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=316484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}