Activists say how Mamdani stands up to Trump will start with NYPD

New York - It was the latest round of nationwide protests against United States President Donald Trump.

But amid a sea of signs decrying "kings" and "tyrants", many New Yorkers participating in Saturday's "No Kings" demonstration had their eyes on local politics - specifically the November 4 mayoral vote.

The election has drawn national and global interest as the frontrunner, State Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, will face off against his top opponent, former Governor Andrew Cuomo, as well as trailing Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa.

The Democratic Socialist's surprise success in the race has melded with the deep dismay towards Trump's hardline policies felt by many New Yorkers. And in response, the president has raised the possibility of deploying the National Guard and threatened to target city funding if Mamdani is elected.

Many first-time protesters and longtime organisers have been heartened by the 34-year-old's grounding in local grassroots activism, which they said differentiates him from Cuomo. But many still have questions over how Mamdani would manage a sprawling local police force that maintains ties with the federal government.

Those interviewed said reducing damage caused by the Trump years must start with the right local policies.

Marching near Times Square in Manhattan, Jovana Liranzo, a 50-year-old mental health case worker from the Bronx, told Al Jazeera she believes Mamdani will give the right kind of support to immigrant communities as US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents continue operations in the city.

"I just think he has a good heart," she said of Mamdani.

Highlighting Liranzo's concerns about ICE, federal agents on Tuesday conducted a raid in Manhattan's well-known Chinatown, an escalation from their previous emphasis on targeting undocumented individuals when they appear in court.

Liranzo said her father was deported to the Dominican Republic during Trump's first term in connection with a drug conviction from the 1980s and she hopes to save others from a similar fate.

While New York's "sanctuary laws" restrict local authorities from coordinating with federal immigration enforcement, Liranzo has been wary of current Mayor Eric Adams and reports of his cooperation with the Trump administration. She does not see Cuomo, who shares many of Trump's wealthy donors, as much better.

"Mamdani gives someone like me hope," she said. "Cuomo can be bought."

During the final mayoral debate on Wednesday, Mamdani echoed that line while decrying ICE as a "reckless entity that cares little for the law and even less for the people that they're supposed to serve".

He added that he was ready to work with Trump to make the cost of living more affordable.

But on the president's deportation drive and targeting of political opponents, he added: "I will fight him every step of the way."

'When the rubber hits the road'

The success of Mamdani's fight, said Keegan Stephan, a 41-year-old former Occupy Wall Street organiser, must start with how the candidate leads the New York Police Department (NYPD), a sprawling force of more than 36,000 uniformed officers with an annual budget that can exceed $11bn.

Stephan, now a civil rights lawyer in New York, explained that overpolicing leads to more arrests for low-level offences, particularly in Black and brown neighbourhoods.

That, in turn, leads to a higher likelihood of undocumented individuals being funnelled into the legal system, making them vulnerable to targeting by federal agents, he said.

"The only way to actually stand in opposition to Trump and federal law enforcement is to curtail the overpolicing of communities of colour by the NYPD itself," Stephan said.

Mamdani has been acutely aware of concerns about how he would work with police and on Tuesday announced that his pick for police commissioner would be Jessica Tisch, the top cop serving under Adams. 

That choice did not sit well with Stephan.

"I think it's incongruous for a Mamdani-type politician to appoint the same police commissioner as Eric Adams, who advocates for an entirely different type of policing than Mamdani claims to," Stephan said.

He pointed to Adams's support for "quality of life" enforcement as well as the NYPD's increased use of the "stop and frisk" tactic under his stewardship, both of which increase arrest rates for low-level crimes in minority communities.

Complaints against NYPD officers surged during Adams's time in office, reaching a 10-year high in 2024.

"[Tisch] has been behind a real uptick in crackdowns on low-level offences, ... which statistically has been proven not to work and to target communities of colour and impoverish people," he said. "That just seems very at odds with Mamdani's vision of policing in the city, and I worry that she could be an impediment to implementing those changes."

To be sure, Mamdani's messaging has been "significantly better" than Cuomo, Sliwa or erstwhile candidate Adams in terms of police reform and political protest in the city, Stephan said.

The candidate has called for the creation of a $1bn Department of Community Safety to handle noncriminal calls, including those concerning mental health and homelessness.

He has also pushed to give the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) final say on police discipline, shifting the authority from the police commissioner. And he has said he would do away with a police unit, the Strategic Response Group, which has a history of using excessive force against protesters.

But given the vast power of the NYPD, which maintains its own political might despite being under the command of the mayor, the personnel Mamdani picks to lead the department would have an outsized influence.

"I'm very concerned that no matter how progressive someone wants to be or believes themselves to be or positions themselves to be, when the rubber hits the road, they end up doing what more powerful interests demand," Stephan said.

'Does the establishment water him down?'

Questions also linger over how Mamdani would approach the sprawling surveillance apparatus that the NYPD currently maintains, including a "gang database" that targets young people of colour for increased surveillance.

The NYPD's Intelligence Bureau works in coordination with the FBI and other federal agencies as part of the "Joint Terrorism Task Force", which spearheaded the wide-scale surveillance of Muslim New Yorkers in the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

While local laws are meant to curtail the NYPD's surveillance, a civilian watchdog warned last year that federal agencies continue to bypass those safeguards.

Mamdani has decried the surveillance of Muslim communities in the city after September 11, saying it has "torn at the fabrics of civic society".

The NYPD also has a history of surveilling activists in various movements that have swept the city in recent years. Those have included the Occupy movement that swept into New York City in 2011, Black Lives Matter demonstrations that crescendoed in 2013 and 2020 and student-led encampments against Israel's war in Gaza that began in 2024.

Elsa Eli Waithe, a 37-year-old who became active in protests against police brutality after the police killing of Eric Garner on Staten Island in 2014, has been watching Mamdani's run with "cautious optimism".

Waithe was a regular participant in "die-ins" at Grand Central Station after the officer involved in Garner's killing was not indicted. The events were regularly monitored by the NYPD. In one instance, a police informant ended up in a group chat of protest organisers.

"Someone got into our text thread, and there was nothing for them to report," Waithe, a comedian, recalled. "We're just folks doing die-ins, making banners. I just remember thinking, 'Wow, there are things you guys could have been doing in this time [instead of surveilling us].'"

Waithe hopes Mamdani will usher in a new era of transparency, an outlook stoked, in part, by the candidate's own protest bona fides.

That included being arrested at a sit-in against US funding for Israel's war on Gaza in front of top US Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer's home in 2021; joining a 15-day hunger strike with New York City taxi drivers a year earlier; and in 2020 calling to defund the NYPD, which he decried as "racist".

Mamdani has sought to dial back his past comments, particularly on police, issuing a blanket apology to officers in the final stretch of the race. His selection of Tisch as police commissioner, who has yet to accept the post, has been widely seen as an effort to allay law enforcement concerns.

"He can't be at war with the NYPD. I don't expect that of him," Waithe said. "But we'll have to see what happens when he gets there. Does he water himself down? Does the establishment water him down?"

'A huge test'

A block in the Brooklyn neighbourhood of Sheepshead Bay has become one of the flashpoints of pro-Palestine advocacy in the city, which has reached a fever pitch during Israel's war in Gaza.

On an afternoon this month, activists gathered in front of the Mini-Circuits factory, decrying its role in supplying parts to Israel's military, which has killed 68,280 Palestinians in the enclave since October 23, 2023.

Mamdani's political rise has been cheered by many of those deeply engaged in pro-Palestine activism, both for his staunch support of Palestinian rights and for what some hope will be a pivot away from how the city has portrayed the demonstrations.

Adams has said pro-Palestine protesters in the city spew "anti-Semitism" and have been fuelled by outside agitators. Tisch, his police commissioner, oversaw the NYPD's repeated deployments to university campuses as well as a police training that reportedly labelled watermelons and keffiyehs as anti-Semitic symbols.

Nasreen, the founder of Mamas 4 a Free Palestine, who declined to give her last name for fear of harassment, said at the Brooklyn protest that she worries Mamdani will succumb to the "bothsideism" that has long dominated discourse on Israel and the Palestinian territory it occupies.

"Obviously, I support Zohran, but I believe everybody has to be held accountable. And he's been backtracking a lot," she said.

Maryam Alwan, one of the leaders of student-led protests at Columbia University, who was not at the Brooklyn protest, said she was trying to be more "radically optimistic" about Mamdani and how he would respond to protests and encampments, which reached a fever pitch last year.

She noted that Mamdani's father, Mahmood Mamdani, a leading scholar at Columbia in postcolonial studies, conducted a teach-in at the university's encampment before it was cleared by the NYPD. The younger Mamdani was also a vocal advocate for Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent US resident targeted by the Trump administration for his pro-Palestine advocacy.

"I think just having someone like Mamdani in office who would be committed to upholding the truth and not spreading harmful rhetoric would be extremely meaningful because we've learned with the kidnapping of Mahmoud and all of the students around the country that this rhetoric is not harmless," said the 23-year-old, who graduated from Columbia this year. "It can very quickly turn into something concretely dangerous for the people who are being accused of anti-Semitism."

Many private universities like Columbia have memorandums of understanding with the city that allow them to request the NYPD intervene on campus, as they did repeatedly over the last two years, clearing encampments and arresting students, including Alwan. The NYPD maintains the right of refusal.

As Trump has upped his pressure on those schools by threatening their federal funding, administrators may be more zealous about activating the police to respond to future protests, Alwan said.

That could lead to a major decision for Mamdani, who has remained a staunch supporter of the right to protest on the campaign trail.

"I think it would be a huge test because I think that would be one of the biggest ways that we can see if he would live up to his word in terms of supporting the Palestine movement writ large," Alwan said.

"It could be a big flashpoint for sure."

'The fine print'

For activists like 40-year-old Chivona Newsome, who cofounded Black Lives Matter Greater New York, elections can be a familiar dance: An upstart candidate wins the hearts of grassroots organisers on the campaign trail but succumbs to pressures of the political establishment once in office.

"I'm a little afraid personally because we've seen it before," Newsome told Al Jazeera.

"We see what happens when people run for office, right? That's my favourite time. I love them. I love their policies. I'm so excited for them. But we see when the fame comes, we see when the pressure comes, we see when campaign finance comes how people change."

But in Mamdani, she is optimistic for something more enduring.

She agreed he has softened rhetorically on some of his stances but believes it is part of a carefully calibrated communication style that allows Mamdani to make otherwise polarising goals more palatable.

In many ways, she said, his policies still represent radical reform, including diverting police funding to social services, even if not couched in radical language.

"I'm very excited for someone who says the CCRB does not have teeth," she said, pointing to Mamdani's pledge to reform the review board.

"I'm very excited to see his plan for police not being called on to be mental health workers," she added.

"If you listen to the fine print, these are activist policies," Newsome said. "These are the things that we've fought for. How could you not be excited?"