Mayor Mamdanis new scam: Charge NYC taxpayers to hire his rent-a-mobs

New Yorkers, you’ve been slacking — so the mayor wants to organize you.Mayor Zohran Mamdani isn’t happy that only 400 people showed up to last year’s Rent Guidelines Board hearings.In response, last Wednesday, he launched Organize NYC, a supposed volunteer effort to have New Yorkers participate in local government.Taken straight from the Democratic Socialists of America’s community-organizing playbook, Mamdani is calling it “a long-term initiative to bring mass public participation into the work of governing.”First stop: the RGB.The body with power to set rent adjustments for the city’s 1 million rent-stabilized units will hold four public hearings in June before voting on increases at its June 25 meeting.Mamdani was elected on the dishonest promise to “immediately” freeze the rent on stabilized tenants for four years.Since taking office, however, he has been forced to recognize what the law has made clear from the start: He cannot set rents himself, and overt interference with the independent RGB could expose a rent freeze to a legal challenge.So Mamdani has found another way.His Office of Mass Engagement will soon recruit so-called volunteers to fan out across selected neighborhoods and encourage rent-stabilized tenants to attend the hearings.In other words, City Hall is mobilizing the constituency most likely to support the mayor’s preferred outcome while insisting it is merely promoting civic participation.He’s paying lip service to the RGB’s independence while directing a government office to organize a campaign ensuring the board “answers to the people it serves” — an ominous phrase that gives away Organize NYC’s actual purpose.The mayor insists the effort aims to educate, not advocate.

According to Mass Engagement Commissioner and DSA veteran Tascha Van Auken, the volunteers are “not advocating for any specific outcome or position.”Don’t be fooled.Organize NYC is a thinly veiled, taxpayer-funded effort to embed campai...