Civil rights lawyer Janos Marton was promoted to CEO of Dream.org late last month, after serving as the organization\u2019s chief advocacy officer for more than five years. The organization, which is focused on criminal justice reform and green jobs advocacy, is launching a new chapter around artificial intelligence advocacy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Marton spoke with City & State about his new role, the organization\u2019s focus on bipartisanship and the state of criminal justice in New York City under Mayor Zohran Mamdani. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n
You were recently promoted to CEO. How has it been in the first week on the job? Has anything surprised you?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been crazy. Being a CEO, the one experience it reminds me of the most is being a candidate for office. I ran for office once, six years ago, and at the time I said that was the busiest, craziest thing I\u2019ve ever done. And part of the reason for that is when you\u2019re a candidate, there is an endless amount to do, and you just have to make peace with the fact that you\u2019ll go to bed every night, no matter how hard you work, not having achieved it. And every conversation matters. You can\u2019t take off any individual conversations and just let someone else carry the load. And I think there are a lot of parallels to being a CEO: the responsibility that comes with speaking for the organization, being the top of the food chain as it relates to staff matters, and just the amount that has to get done. So that\u2019s been a bit of a surprise, but I\u2019m excited about it.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ve been at the organization for a while. What are you most proud of so far in your time there? What would you consider some of your biggest wins?<\/p>\n
My goal is to establish Dream.org as the most effective criminal justice organization in the country, and we\u2019re on our way there. … We run a program called Dream Justice, which is the best advocacy training program in the criminal justice field, specifically training people who are formerly incarcerated to become advocates in their own local communities, so that we can expand the power and reach of the movement.<\/p>\n
You\u2019re overseeing a new chapter of Dream.org with a focus on AI accountability. How are you navigating that, given AI technology is developing so quickly?<\/p>\n
AI is certainly the biggest issue in the country right now. But what\u2019s been missing from the conversation, and what we hope to elevate, is the way that AI-supercharged surveillance will have on both the criminal justice system and the economic system as it relates to workers\u2019 dignity. You can easily imagine a world where (surveillance) lands most harshly on people who are on supervision after prison, where people have very few legal rights to contest those kinds of conditions. It\u2019s so important for us to elevate these issues as part of the broader AI conversation. The role I see Dream.org playing is making sure that the direct impact of AI policy on working-class people is not ignored.<\/p>\n
Do you think the government, and the public sector in general, is prepared for the changes that come with a greater adoption of AI?<\/p>\n
Definitely not. But we all have to start educating ourselves somewhere. I saw people giving (New York City Council Speaker Julie) Menin flak for holding a hearing, given that New York City Council virtually has no formal power over these big tech companies. But I disagree with those takes. I thought it was good that New Yorkers had a day where we were talking about AI in the political space. There is a lot to learn, and things are moving really fast. But too often, I hear that as an excuse for why the public sector can\u2019t be involved. I think the onus is on organizations like ours who care to say, \u201cNo, we actually demand action.\u201d We want the impact of AI and these technologies and data centers on the environment to be taken seriously.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re not in a very bipartisan political climate, but Dream.org seems to emphasize partnering across the aisle. Why is that a focus for the organization?<\/p>\n
Common ground bipartisan work is the way to win durable change. I\u2019m somebody who came up as a lefty. I still consider myself very progressive on issues, but during my time at the ACLU, I was at arguably the most well-resourced nonprofit advocacy organization in the United States, and we did excellent work. But it struck me that in a lot of states that we went into, conservative legislators would see us and run for the hills rather than engage with us on issues. And when I thought about the places in this country where mass incarceration rates were the highest, where the prison conditions were the worst, those are often places controlled by Republican governors and legislators. If we, as a criminal justice movement, didn\u2019t have a plan for how we\u2019re trying to pass criminal justice reform in places like that, then we\u2019re really just condemning large swaths of the United States to have these horrific systems.<\/p>\n
You worked on the Close Rikers campaign. Criminal justice reform is a big part of Dream.org\u2019s work. And you also advised the Mamdani transition team on criminal justice. Have you seen Mamdani\u2019s administration make any strides in that area?\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a big fan of Zohran Mamdani. \u2026 As far as his work over the last 10 months, it\u2019s a low bar to clear because Eric Adams was not only hostile to the concept of criminal justice reform, he flagrantly broke the law around closing Rikers and refused to take statutorily mandated steps to move the island toward closure. So obviously, Mayor Mamdani is doing better than that, and there have been a few good steps that he\u2019s taken in this area, but honestly, I\u2019m going to have to see more. The downside to being the really high energy, charismatic leader that Mayor Mamdani is is that we\u2019ve seen how effectively he moves on an issue when he really believes in it, and I have not seen that energy around closing Rikers. \u2026 I haven\u2019t seen enough in terms of the administration working with prosecutors and judges to figure out how to responsibly lower the jail population. I recognize that dealing with jails and prisons is no political executive\u2019s first choice. It\u2019s often sort of pushed to the side. But eventually, (politicians) come to realize that they now own this jail and prison system. Rikers Island is now Mayor Mamdani\u2019s problem, and I would encourage them to lean into it more, not less.<\/p>\n
Outside of your day job, you are active as a Democratic organizer and volunteer on Staten Island. Do you think Democrats could unseat Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, and what would it take to do so in the future?<\/p>\n
Nicole Malliotakis has been a foot soldier for the MAGA agenda and done virtually nothing to stand up to (President Donald Trump) over the last few years. She specializes in promoting bipartisan bills that she knows are going nowhere, so she could burnish her credentials as some kind of problem solved. But those of us who follow her closely on the island know that she\u2019s basically a reliable Trump vote and has never voted against him on a consequential matter. \u2026 Staten Island gets this reputation, maybe sometimes fairly, as a MAGA stronghold. But I\u2019ve got to be honest, I see a lot less of that energy now than I did in 2024. I think (Democratic challenger) Mike DeCillis is a good candidate. \u2026 He holds a lot of the strong principled positions that are in line with the party\u2019s base. I wish the DCCC would take this race more seriously. I know it\u2019s hard for them to do so based on some of the outcomes of the last few cycles, but you got to start somewhere. And I think this is as good a cycle to lean in as any.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Civil rights lawyer Janos Marton was promoted to CEO of Dream.org late last month, after serving as the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377050,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[3777,12617,9,24,63,20709,7159,1413,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-377049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-criminal-justice","tag-interviews-profiles","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-nyn-media","tag-personality","tag-policy","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377049","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=377049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377049\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}