Zohran Mamdani's First 100 Days

decent number of which probably were bisexual. I suppose technically we were directly above the Basement nightclub in the Knockdown Center event venue. Gathered this Sunday afternoon to attend Mayor Zoron Mamdani's one hundred day address. I'm Garrison Davis. This is it could happen here. I showed about things falling apart and sometimes putting stuff back together. This one is

one of those rare episodes focused on the latter. Earlier this April marked Mayor Mamdani's first one hundred days in office. This episode, I'll discuss what Zoron has done these first one hundred days, some of the challenges he's faced, if he's been able to deliver on the promises of his campaign, and how he's adapted to the power and constraints of running the biggest city in the country, and finally, what all this could mean for the future of working class

and left wing politics in the United States. Let's first return to the one hundred day address above the Basement Nightclub. Upon entering the venue, you found yourself in a museum

of the administration's first one hundred days. This little installation displayed the mayor's snowshovel from the historic blizzard during Zoron's first few weeks in office, a tenant organizing suggestion board from the rental ripoff hearings, and a child sized mayoral podium used to announce a new free childcare program for

two year olds. Museum plaques detailed victories for labor and tenants rights, as well as infrastructure accomplishments like scaffolding reform and a pothole blitz that filled over twenty thousand potholes in just three days. Before the mayor's speech, a Bronx parent, two tenant organizers, and a city worker from the Department of Transportation spoke to the crowd about how life is different under the new administration. Mamdani's speech was effectively a

state of the Union for New York City. The mayor outlined the campaign promises the administration has fulfilled so far in their short time in office, and connected his style of governing to the Sewer socialists of Milwaukee from the first half of the twentieth century, who focused on strengthening public services.

the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection. The event in general was focused on uplifting civil servants and celebrating public service, whether that be bus drive, school teachers, or the sanitation workers that kept the city running during the worst snowstorm in years. It feels like for the past few decades, the only public sector job that gets regularly celebrated as noble by those in government or in the media, and

promoted by pop culture is being a police officer. Being a cop is the only public sector job that gets uplifted with propaganda. Zoron's little videos promoting three point one city call center workers is to quote front of the pod Ben Lorber, rolling back decades of neoliberal propaganda reasserting the dignity of public sector work and workers. A common turn of phrase uttered by Mayor Mumdani is if you can't solve the smallest task in someone's life, why would

they ever trust you to solve the biggest one. So let's go over some things big and small that Mumdani has been able to do in his first one hundred days. One of Mamdani's core campaign promises was to to freeze the rent. On February eighteenth, Mayor Mamdani appointed six new members to the nine member Rent Guidelines Board, which each year is tasked with determining the rent increase percentages for the more than one million rent stabilized apartments in the city.

Under airic adams, the board approved a three percent rent increase for one year leases and a four point five percent increase for two year leases. In just a few weeks, the new board will hold a preliminary vote to freeze or raise rents before their final vote in June. Public testimony on rent adjustments is currently underway. Housing in general is one of the top issues affecting affordability in the city, and the Mayor's approach has not been limited to filling

vacancies on the Rent Guidelines Board. After Zora's inauguration speech on January first, he went to a neglected apartment building just east of Prospect Park to sign an executive order revitalizing the Mayor's Office to protect tenants and appointed at time tenant organizer to lead the office. This apartment building was owned by a literally bankrupt landlord called the Pinnacle Group, who was responsible for more than five thousand housing violations

and fourteen thousand complaints. The revamped Office to Protect Tenants and the Mayor intervened in the bankruptcy proceedings and successfully secured thirty million dollars in repairs and upgrades for tenants, as well as protection from future displacement. Through this office, the administration has continued to crack down on bad landlords

who violate New York City law and mystrey tenants. Just a few weeks after the inauguration, Momdannie announced a two point one million dollar settlement from A and E Real Estate Properties for tenant harassment and hazardous conditions across fourteen buildings in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens. As a part of the settlement, A and E was also required to correct

more than four thousand building condition violations. In February, the Department of Housing, Preservation and Development released a public list of the two hundred and fifty buildings with the most severe housing code violations a city wide and put them under heightened oversight via the Alternative Enforcement Program, with the city stepping in to make repairs, then billing the landlords if they failed to address violations.

can say the landlord was egregious at Realty. The city brought a case against Miller for dangerously direct conditions at nine to one to nine Prospect Avenue in the South Bronx, and for the first time ever, courts imposed the maximum penalties under the city's nuisance Abatement law, a one thousand dollars fine per day until housing violations are addressed and two point one seven four million dollars in retroactive penalties.

During the first one hundred days, the city held five rental ripoff hearings, one in each borough, providing New Yorker's a platform to discuss various problems with their landlord from poor conditions to repair delays or junk fees. This was a dedicated public forum for tenants to speak directly to

city officials and collectively shape housing policy going forward. A month into office, the mayor announced a thirty eight million dollar investment to install modern heating and cooling in seven hundred and twelve of New York City's public housing units at the Beach forty first Street houses in Queens And Technically this is after the first one hundred days, but I think it's worth mentioning that just a few days ago, zorunannounced a two point five billion dollar investment in public

housing to deliver new energy efficient lighting and faucets to forty five thousand homes, heat pumps in twenty thousand, and ten thousand new induction stoves, all affecting the niche public housing in New York City. On Zoron's very first day in office, he also signed two executive orders to accelerate housing construction by building on city owned properties to increase the supply of affordable housing and cutting red tape to

make it faster and more affordable to build. The development approval process for building affordable housing has been reduced by more than two years by the administration's implementation of the new voter approved expediated Land use Review procedure, combined with a new program called the Neighborhood Builder's Fast Track, which will pre select qualified developers to shorten the pre development timeline by eight months for certain projects city owned land.

Another of Zorn's core campaign promises was universal childcare. On his eighth day in office, Mayramdani announced a partnership with Governor Kathy Hochel to provide free childcare for thousands of two year olds in New York City with a one

point two billion dollar increase in state funding. Since then, the mayor has expanded the free three K program for three year olds to more than half of all school districts in the city, and announced two K fall enrollment for school districts eighteen, twenty three, ten, six, and twenty seven, which serve lower income neighborhoods. Two K applications open for the first time on June second, with the program operating on a full day schedule from eight am to six

pm all year round. As a part of the three K expansion, seven new early childcare education centers are opening in Western Queens, Staten Island, South Brooklyn and the South Bronx And. On March thirtieth, the mayor announced the city's first piecelet program for free on site childcare for city workers, based at the David Dinkins Municipal Building, with applications opening

on April thirtieth. The city also created a new accessible childcare provider map with interactive features to filter by location, age group, and cost. The mayor says that all these steps will lead to free childcare for every three year old and two year old in the city by the end of his first term. Another key promise was fast

and free buses. The administration is making headway on the fast park by building more bus lanes, redesigning streets, as well as adding protected by lanes on McGinnis Boulevard, thirty first Street in Astoria, Ashland Place, across Flatbush, East Flatbush, Midwood, and Brooklyn and Kingston Avenues in central Brooklyn. Amdani restarted the stalled Madison Ave bus lane redesign to make buses faster and more reliable for ninety two thousand daily riders.

The city announced a new bus lane for the Bronze Crosstown bus service to Yankee Stadium and restarted the Fordham Road Bus Lane project to improve the busiest bus corridor in the Bronx, servicing an average of one hundred and

thirty thousand daily riders across four routes. Just this week, construction began in Brooklyn for the redesign of Flatbush Avenue with the goal of improving bus speeds by over forty percent for one hundred and thirty two thousand daily riders, and before the World Cup this summer, Zoron has promised to complete new bike lanes and pedestrian upgrades in Lower Manhattan. As for the free part, that will be a bit harder.

Amdani maintains that his administration is working with the state government in Albany and the MTA to eventually make New York City buses free, and proposed a five week free bus pilot program during the World Cup, though it's unclear if that will happen. It's not all sunshine and rainbows in New York City. Upon taking office, Mayor Mumdani discovered the city was facing an unexpected financial crisis in the form of a hidden twelve billion dollar deficit left by

former mayor Eric Adams. Stemming from years of fiscal mismanagement and the under budgeting of essential services like rental and cash assistance, shelters, health insurance, and special ad as Mayor Eric Adams covered up this massive budget deficit by leaving the gaps grossly understated, gaps that were made worse by divestment in New York City by the state under former

Governor Andrew Cuomo. The mayor is actually required by law to have a balanced budget, so rather than sweeping this under the rug by continuing to cook the city's books like his predecessor, Zoran chose transparency about the financial crisis he's inherited and signed an executive order to designate chief Savings Officers in every city agency to streamline processes and

eliminate waste. Some of these savings so far include canceling twenty thousand dollars of Slack subscriptions to saving one hundreds of thousands of dollars by foregoing vacant office space. Through his relationship with Governor Kathy Hochel, the mayor secured one point five billion dollars in state aid in February that, combined with higher than expected Wall Street revenues and savings

measures shrunk the deficit to five point four billion. Zoron's preliminary budget, released last February, sparked criticism for failing short of promises to increase funding to parks and libraries. While campaigning, Zoron advocated for city libraries to receive zero point five percent of the city budget, but the preliminary budget only allocated point three nine percent, which is actually a twenty nine million dollar cut from the last Adams budget down

to four hundred and fifty six million dollars. Meanwhile, the park budget remained effectively flat at about points five percent, rather than boosting it to one percent of the total budget as Mamdani previously hoped. Though in March, Mayor Mamdani announced new capital investment of fifty million dollars to reconstruct ten parks in underserved neighborhoods. This February budget is preliminary and subject to change as Zoron's negotiations with the city

council and the state continue. In February, Mamdani reversed a previous policy against the force removal of homeless encampments after twenty people died in the street during a horrific blizzard and sudden cold snap in late January, despite the efforts of outreach workers visiting known homeless people every two hours to offer warm shelter and check if they needed help.

Fourteen hundred people were placed into shelters and warming centers during that first freeze, with eighty five people involuntarily moved or hospitalized. The new encampment SPEEP policy will be led by the Department of Homeless Services rather than the NYPD as they were under Eric Adams, which mcdonnie said put homeless New Yorkers in danger and was ineffective in moving

people into shelter or housing. Under the new plan, after posting a removal notice, outreach workers will visit encampments every day for a week with the goal of connecting people to shelter and establishing a pipeline to stable housing, while opening new shelters across the city, including New York City's

first ever pet inclusive transitional housing facility for families. Much of the criticism levied at Zoran revolves around his choice to retain NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tish, something he announced before of the election. Zoron did cancel and Eric Adams plan to add five thousand more NYPD officers, but as promised, their budget remained effectively the same despite the financial deficit.

But Tish specifically has been seen as a rare moderating force in the administration, an outlier that may be preventing police reforms that Zoron campaigned on, like disbanding the SRG, the Strategic Response Group tasked with responding to both protests and terrorism, as well as getting rid of the NYPD

gang database. Critics have noted that Zoron seems to be moving towards quote unquote reforms of the gang database rather than his previous call to get rid of it, saying in early April, quote I've made my critiques of the database clear, and the NYPD has also implemented a number of reforms as per the recommendation that came through, and the implementation of those reforms and the results of that are part of the active discussion that we are having. Unquote.

The gang database in New York has shrunk by forty

percent in the last two years. As for the SRG, Mayor Mamdani still maintains that he remains quote steadfast in my commitment to disband the SRG, to do so in a manner that upholds both First Amendment rights of New Yorkers and keeps New Yorkers safe, and that is the subject of an active conversation that we are Commissioner Tisch has been particularly resistant to the idea of disbanding the SRG, though earlier this month, Mayor Mumdanie's chief of staff, elbsgard

Church said on the news that the administration remains committed to fulfilling the campaign promise of disbanding the SRG, and that a delegation of city Hall and NYPD officials traveled to Columbus, Ohio to learn about their protest policing model, focused on quote communication and quote de escalation over mass arrests and aggressive force.

the NYPD as of yet. In March, Zoron took the first step in establishing the Department of Community Safety by opening the Office of Community Safety, led by Deputy Mayor Ronita Francois, who directed Deblasio's Action Plan for Neighborhood Safety and advised Campaign Zero, which opposes the Gang Database. The new Office of Community Safety will develop strategies and coordinate efforts to combat gun violence, mental health, crisis response, hate crimes,

and substance abuse issues. At the announcement, Francois said, quote, the evidence is clear. Addressing what ails our communities, whether that be mbling, physical infrastructure, social disconnection, or a lack of access to economic opportunity, is how we best ensure that our communities are safe unquote It's too early to judge the impact of the office, but such an office or city department has the potential to challenge the police's

monopoly on public safety. The other common critique of Mumdani is based on his endorsement of liberal Governor Kathy Hochel and his decision to focus on governing rather than dedicating resources and political capital towards further uphill primary challenges. Zoran has said, quote, the success of our movement will be

defined by the success of our government. Through his working partnership with Governor Hokeel, the mayor has been able to extract wins from the state, particularly for universal childcare and the one point five billion dollars in state aid. In the realm of discourse, some leftists, anarchists or ultras have jumped on any fault or policy shift as a sign that Zoron has wholly moved to the right or betrayed

the movement. Such opinions are rewarded by the social media economy, which tends to encourage whatever is seen as the most radical, extreme, or divisive opinion. This tendency has been present even among some of Zoran's earliest online supporters. Behind this tendency is a willingness and frankly hunger to turn on Zoron, not necessarily for anything he has or has not done, but

because of the position he now occupies. Zoron used to be an outsider challenging the Democratic establishment embodied by Andrew Cuomo, but now he's one of the most popular Democrats in the country. DNC social media accounts are hosting Zoron memes and hype videos. This could be viewed as a massive accomplishment, evidence that the Democratic Party can be forced to bend toward left wing populism because of the working class voters and mass organizing that put Zoron in the position he's

currently in. But others view Zoron's acceptance and select promotion within the party as a sign he's been corrupted, co opted, recuperated, or made palatable. Both of these things can be partially true. The Democratic elite certainly have their own motives for dipping their toes into the Mamdani Hotub, just as Zoron and the New York City DSA have their own aspirations for influencing the direction of the party towards social democracy and

democratic socialism. In general, there's a lot of confusion or disagreement on what it means to be a democratic socialist in a position of power. As an executive, Zoron is in a unique position that not many other DSA members have ever had. Being in such a position of power informs and shapes the way someone interacts with the systems of party and state in a way that those outside of power cannot fully understand. Stand. It filters ideology into

material actions. This idea frightens many, but differences in political horizons also affect the way people interact and move with these systems. The question is not what should Zoron do if there were no constraints on his power, because then

obviously he should just implement utopian communism. But his power obviously does have constraints if the goal for the left is to build a working class movement to that end, as a function of Zoron's constraints, it may actually be more effective for him to operate down certain state pathways that allow him to facilitate the building of a working class movement and avoid other more extreme pathways that, because of the current constraints on executive power, would either be

ineffective at best, or self destructive at worst. As the mayor, Zoron's job is to run the biggest city in the country, and as a democratic socialist, that means using government to make life better for the working class. His task is to govern in a way that alleviates economic conditions, to make it easier to organize and build a working class movement. But building that movement is not his job. It's yours.

It's the job of the people, and such a movement is the only way of holding elected leaders like Zoron accountable. Zoron is not a revolutionary nor is he an organizer. He's the mayor of New York City, and as mayor, he has to serve more than eight million New Yorkers, not just the fourteen thousand members of New York City DSA.

The mayor may join the picket line with striking nurses and fight for working class New Yorkers in city Hall, or even open an office of mass engagement, like Zoron has done, but it is up to those outside city Hall to move in tandem by working to rebuild a labor movement. Assuming that Zoron or some random public official can do whatever is the most extreme radical thing mistakingly sees the state as having more power than it actually does.

People often see the state as an ahistorical, abstracted seat of power, but no, the state is just the mediator between capital and labor. The power of the state to support labor is exercised by doing things that are in the interest of labor and society as a whole, rather than just capital. But this ability is directly linked to the extent that labor is organized. So if labor is largely unorganized, then Zoron is more restrained in what he

can do. What he can do then is use his position to help build working class power, which will then enable him further, so on and so on. The state has no power against capital outside of the power that labor gives it. Our situation is one where capital is very strong, which means when the state serves capital it's quite strong, but in its function of serving labor it's

rather weak. Because the left is failed to reckon with the fact that right now, labor is actually quite weak, which means that state actors, even those on the pro labor left, are very constrained. So the main thing they can do to strengthen labor is providing better conditions for which labor power may be built, and importantly, organizers must utilize those conditions to build the labor movement. Zorn's other task is to demonstrate that left wing working class politics

can actually govern, not just critique. Whether or not he succeeds at governing and delivering for working class New Yorkers determines the perceived viability of democratic socialist politics nationally going forward. As Mam Donnie has said, the worth of an ideology can only be judged by its delivery. Mamdani is not the first democratic socialist to be put in such a position.

In his one hundred Day Address, Mayor Mumdanni spoke about the so called sewer socialists of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who one hundred years ago quote built the greatest public park system in the nation and whether the Great Depression better than almost any other American city, Milwaukee purged corruption, built the first municipally sponsored public housing development in the nation, and

transformed the city's sewage disposal system unquote. Mayrra Mamdani is trying to revive this legacy of municipal socialism by acting on his mantra there is no problem too big, no task too small. On day six of office, Mamdanni fixed the infamous Williamsburg bridge bump that has long plague cyclists, and in response to the historic winter damage affecting city streets, the administration launched a five borough pothole blade, filling one hundred thousand potholes in less than one hundred days.

Hall isn't just an abstract ideal. In the first one hundred days, the administration secured nine point three million dollars in restitution.

reinstate ten thousand wrongfully deactivated delivery workers. In March, the administration won almost two million dollars for over eight hundred fast food workers at Taco Bell and retail workers for

violations of worker protection laws against unpredictable scheduling. The mayor signed executive orders strengthening consumer protections by targeting hidden junk fees and impossible to cancel subscriptions, and expanded the protected time off law to four point three million preview mostly unprotected workers, and issued compliance warnings to nearly sixty thousand employers.

Speaking of sewer socialism, at the end of March, Mayormamdani announced a one hundred and eight million dollar investment to upgrade and replace more than six thousand and seven hundred water catch basins to combat flooding. This quote unquote pothole politics least the groundwork of public trust needed for larger systematic transformations.

New Deal era mayor Pharaoh LaGuardia. The city will build a nine thousand square foot store at the site to offer cheaper groceries than the capitalist competitors.

We will not be ashamed of investing in youth mental health clinics, or working to close wrikers, or fighting for immigrants targeted by Ice. To any New Yorker, whether you're under attack from the federal government's cruelty or suffocating under the affordability crisis, we will stand beside you. Because government is a series of choices, and socialism is the choice. To fight for every New Yorker to extend democracy from the ballot box to the rest of our lives.

five hundred million dollars in annual revenue. And if owners want to avoid the tax by moving into the residents, that's fine too, because then they'll have to pay New York resident taxes. So you get taxed either way. Part of pushing back against the libertarian ethos in America by showing that government can actually make your life better is

actually showing people what local government is doing. Since taking office, Zoron has employed the same widely successful messaging style that helped get him elected to make pssays and inform New Yorkers about what the administration has been able to accomplish. This is something Democrats have largely failed to do by either just not doing this sort of outreach. While governing, making any outreach inaccessible or hard to understand, or having your outreach come off as cringe or out of touch.

Regardless of how much effort is put into outreach, the people have to also see the improvements being talked about in their own lives or in their own neighborhoods. A dense population and having a cohesive city culture like New York helps with that. Millions of cyclists cross the Williamsburg Bridge every year, so when the mayor fixes the bump during his first week in office, that's an easy reference

point for people. The success of the administration's comm strategy has been by using Zoron's popularity to promote the public sector and public sector workers while actually showing people how social services help city residents. As the mayor says, New

York belongs to all who live in it. While in office, Zoron has largely declined to explicitly talk about how his administration may impact the future of democratic socialism across the country, instead keeping his vision laser focused on improving the lives of working New Yorkers and making this city more affordable. To quote the Mayor, we cannot burden ourselves with the

question of what this means beyond this city. But before the mayor went on stage at the one hundred day address, they played a clip of the Progressive New Deal Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia saying that the greatness of New York City is in the services to its people, where public problems are really the problems of all the people. Quote, and if we succeed here, surely it can be done elsewhere.

When former Socialist Mayor Bernie Sanders made a surprise appearance during Zoron's speech, the Senator spoke about how what's happening in New York is influencing those outside the city.

the catch basins, but also repaving over one thousand miles of roadway. But mister Mayor, presidential and statewide elections are often decided in battleground regions that do not look like New York City. Yeah, I'll be honest with you. Before I was the mayor, I was an assembly member of a story in Long Island City. At that time, I was told that you could only be a democratic socialist in Northwest Queens. Then I became the mayor. Now the next question is the state, Then it'll be the next

question will be the country. I think that this is a politics that can flourish anywhere because, frankly, there is only one majority in this country. That's the working class. And it's time we have a politics that puts them at the heart of what it is that we're pursuing and not as part of the appendix.

DSA caucus. Navigating all these problems will require not just principal leadership with a commitment to working class politics, but also growing the mass organizing apparatus that helped get Zora elected and continuing to build power in city hall, state government, and in the workplace that does it today. For it could happen here, see you on the other side.