The top priorities of the Democratic Socialists of America with respect to policy discussions with New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani include pushing for the Big Apple to divest from the Jewish state in city-run grocery stores that Mamdani has promised and ending New York City Police Department training with what it called the “Israeli occupation forces.”
The socialist group, which counts Mamdani as a member, also said that it will push the city to divest pensions from Israel Bonds, withdraw funds from “banks that lend money to Israel or do business in Israel” and end city contracts with companies that “do business with Israel,” according to leaked documents.
It also plans to push for probes of “real estate agents hosting illegal sales of stolen lands in the West Bank” and “remove non-profit status from charities that raise funds for the Israel Defense Forces,” as well as to divest the City University of New York endowment and “reinstate wrongly fired professors” and “dismantle Eric Adam’s New York City-Israel Economic Council.”
“Arrest Netanyahu and active IDF soldiers for war crimes,” it adds.
Jerry Dunleavy, an investigative reporter, said he acquired the materials after using his name to register for the Democratic Socialists’ Anti-War Working Group, which had been advertised as being open to the public. Once admitted to the group’s video conference, he received a link to the document, which was labeled “AAWG Palestine Policy Meeting Agenda and Notes,” he said.
The materials that he saw were dated between September and November.
“Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani’s win as the next mayor of New York City is a win for the working class,” the group stated on Election Day. “New Yorkers achieved the most monumental electoral victory for the U.S. socialist movement in the last century, despite the millions of dollars invested to stop us.”
“Zohran wasn’t afraid to say boldly what his voters and the majority of Americans believe: that Palestine should be free, and that the United States shouldn’t be complicit in Israel’s genocide,” it said.
Mamdani told fellow Democratic Socialists in 2023 that “when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it has been laced by the IDF.”
A “getting our endorsement” section of the group’s website states that part of the process is filling out an “in-depth questionnaire.”
In 2020, the New York City Council’s Jewish Caucus decried the questionnaire, which it said asked candidates to agree not to visit Israel. “This is rank antisemitism and has no place in our city,” the caucus said.
Among the questions that the Democratic Socialists of America’s chapter in the Washington, D.C., area asks candidates is, “Do you pledge to publicly support the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement?”
It also asks candidates to pledge to refrain from any affiliation with groups, including the “Israeli government or Zionist lobby groups, such as AIPAC, Democratic Majority for Israel, Christians United for Israel, J Street” or “think tanks that obfuscate the reality of the occupation, such as the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.”
