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FOR MAMDANI TO BEAT THE NYPD, THE LEFT MUST BUILD POWER  
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Jonathan Ben-Menachem
November 13, 2025
The Nation
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_ We won’t be able to push Mamdani, or anyone else, to undermine
police power unless we become a force to be reckoned with. _

,

 

In cities across America, a new generation of left-wing mayors is
confronting the same dilemma: What do you do when you inherit
institutions designed to crush left movements like those that carried
you into office? Socialist campaigns promise to challenge the power of
capital, but upon taking office, left executives find themselves
constrained by police unions, business interests, and state
politicians eager to appear tough on crime. Does anyone have a good
plan to push back?

In New York City, we’re about to find out—starting with the cops.

In the run-up to his election as mayor, Zohran Mamdani said he would
keep Jessica Tisch—a billionaire heiress who has rolled back police
reforms and collaborated with ICE—as NYPD commissioner. He repeated
that pledge after his victory last week. Five years ago, Mamdani
called the NYPD
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“racist, anti-queer,” “wicked,” and “corrupt.” After being
forced to apologize for these comments, and pledging his support for
the police, he’s now saying that he and Tisch can work together.
This decision has drawn criticism
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from Mamdani’s supporters, and leftists have good reason to be
concerned about Tisch’s record. Yet instead of viewing this as a
betrayal, we should think of it as proof of how much power
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police have in local politics—and how little power the left holds.

Business elites demand aggressive policing because it establishes what
they see as proper order
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a prerequisite for commercial investment. To quote
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former NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton, police “flush” homeless and
other ostensibly disposable people “off the street” to fuel
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displacement
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ultra-rich aren’t being subtle about this. “Public safety is the
number one fiscal stimulus,” one hedge fundie told
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_Bloomberg_ just after Mamdani’s election.

The playbook is national. In San Francisco, Big Tech
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and real estate
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money toppled reform DA Chesa Boudin; in Minneapolis, defunding
efforts were defeated in part by business and police union advocacy
(though the full story is more complex
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The message travels: Undermine police power, and capital will move to
punish you—at the ballot box, in the press, and through state
preemption.

Because Mamdani’s campaign is now the test case
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for progressive governance
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how he manages the NYPD will have enormous consequences for left
organizing across the country. But ultimately, what happens will be
less down to Mamdani’s choices than to ours. Without movements
strong enough to either pressure or protect them, any left politician
is bound to yield to these interests—and Mamdani is no different. We
won’t be able to push Mamdani, or anyone else, to undermine police
power unless we become a force to be reckoned with.

Who is Jessica Tisch, anyway? An heiress of the Loews Corporation,
Tisch entered public service in 2008, working within the NYPD
intelligence division that helped build a vast surveillance
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network targeting
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Muslims. Adams tapped her as commissioner in late 2024 after his
earlier picks fell
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afoul of federal corruption probes. Tisch rooted out
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some cronyism in the department, and she has taken credit
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for subsequent declines
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in shootings, though New York may only be following a nationwide trend
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But Tisch has also practiced a firmly old-guard version of policing in
ways that underscore just how strange a bedfellow she is set to be
with Mamdani: adopting Bill Bratton’s
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windows policing
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practices, defending
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the city’s racist
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gang database, overseeing
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a training that labels the keffiyeh antisemitic, and collaborating
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with ICE to crush pro-Palestine protests. Against the available
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evidence
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she blamed modest steps like bail reform
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and Raise the Age
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for post-pandemic crime spikes. She is also a staunch Zionist who has
defended
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the NYPD’s brutal policing
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of Palestine protests, whereas Mamdani is an advocate for Palestinian
liberation. And Tisch’s family members spent
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over a million dollars opposing Mamdani’s election.

So what explains their fragile alliance? In a word: power.

After Mamdani won the Democratic primary, the richest New Yorkers
threw tantrums
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and lit
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money on fire
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When Mamdani set out to assuage
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their fears, the scions of capital settled on one demand
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Keep Tisch in her job. Adding to the pressure, Democratic party
leaders initially stayed
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silent. Figures from Kathy Hochul
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to Hakeem Jeffries
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reportedly conditioned their endorsements on keeping Tisch. Faced with
this onslaught, Mamdani yielded. If he wanted to turn his upstart
campaign into a bona fide Democratic coalition, it seemed, he had no
other choice.

Fulfilling their end of the Faustian bargain, Hochul awkwardly
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yet earnestly joined Mamdani at campaign rallies, and Kathy Wylde, one
of the local ruling class’s most influential power brokers, began
saying [[link removed]] that perhaps all
sides could find a way to work together. Now we will all see whether
that’s true.

How should leftists interpret these developments? Writing in _The
Nation_ last July, writer and policing expert Alex Vitale discouraged
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Mamdani from keeping Tisch, arguing that she would “never truly ally
with him.” After Mamdani confirmed that he wanted to keep Tisch,
journalist Ken Klippenstein said
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chosen a “straitjacket,” while Spencer Ackerman called
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the decision a “big mistake,” noting that “Tisch cooperated with
ICE to lock up Leqaa Kordia.”

I also do not see Mamdani and Tisch as natural allies, and I agree
that Tisch’s collaboration with ICE was repugnant. Yet there is a
clear explanation for Mamdani’s decision: There was no organized
opposition. There wasn’t even a rumored alternative to Tisch, let
alone a concerted campaign to propose one.

The left doesn’t build talent pipelines for police brass, and I’m
not arguing that we should start. We want
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to reduce police resources, staffing, and technology. Yet our inaction
meant Mamdani saw no constituency for another choice.

More broadly, the left has yet to recover from the backlash against
the George Floyd uprising, and any honest observer would admit that
regaining the momentum that crested in 2020 will require quite a bit
of organizing. The consequence of all of this is that there was no
significant counterweight to the immense forces urging Mamdani to
stick with Tisch—and to repudiate his former stances on policing. Is
it any wonder that he gave way?

The core battle over Tisch—and the political necessity of conceding,
at least in part, to police power—appears to have been lost. But
that doesn’t mean there is nothing the left can do. Instead of
expending energy on battles we already decided not to fight, we should
scrutinize what Mamdani’s NYPD does differently in 2026. We must
ensure that Mamdani stays true to the promises he made: abolishing the
Strategic Response Group (SRG), cutting overtime spending, and
creating a Department of Community Safety. (SRG’s top officer filed
for retirement
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the day after Mamdani won.)

Mamdani apparently recognizes that Tisch is a savvy politician. Her
mentor and former top cop Bill Bratton describes himself
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as a political broker—it’s part of the job description. But he has
political skills of his own. When _Hell Gate_ asked
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reconciled Tisch’s agenda with his own, his response was wry: “I
think everyone will follow my lead—I’ll be the mayor.” Time will
tell whether can stay three steps ahead of Tisch and her backers.

The first major hurdle for this relationship may come alongside any
major Palestine-related action in 2026. Mamdani’s support base
overlaps
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Palestine activists—he started a Students for Justice in Palestine
chapter in college—so it’s hard to imagine that he would be
enthusiastic about police cracking student skulls
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or swarming
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Bay Ridge, as they did under Eric Adams. At the same time, Tisch is
committed to brutal protest policing. Mamdani’s coalition will be
severely, perhaps fatally, damaged if he winds up overseeing that kind
of assault. He’s already working on an alternative
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approach, but implementing it will be an early, defining test.

One constituency was remarkably quiet amid the battle to control the
NYPD: the NYPD’s largest union, the Police Benevolent Association
(PBA). The PBA endorsed no one
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in the mayoral race and stayed silent on Tisch. Given the PBA’s
outsize influence on New York politics, its silence is deafening—and
cannot be expected to last long.

How might we expect the PBA to greet its new Muslim socialist boss?
Its relationship with New York’s first Black and democratic
socialist
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mayor provides some clues. David Dinkins clashed with the PBA over his
proposal to make the Civilian Complaint Review Board an independent,
civilian-controlled agency. In 1992, the PBA organized an opposition
rally of thousands of cops that devolved into a drunken riot
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complete with cops shouting slurs and storming City Hall.

Bill de Blasio, whose campaign emphasized
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police reform more than Mamdani’s, also fought the police unions
(and lost). Cops turned their backs
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on de Blasio and walked off the job—a classic police tactic, given
that work slowdowns generate headlines reinforcing
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pullbacks endanger residents. The nadir of the relation between police
and de Blasio came during the 2020 protests, when a police union
gleefully posted
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a report of Chiara de Blasio’s arrest—an incident likely on
Mamdani’s mind, as he hired
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additional security after Islamophobic threats.

The battle over Tisch may not be a primary focus for police unions
(though the Sergeants Benevolent Association thinks
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Tisch should stay). The only major play that the unions have made so
far is forcing Mamdani to apologize
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for calling them racist—hardly a controversial claim, as Eric Adams
famously founded
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an organization drawing attention to the issue, but one Mamdani walked
back nonetheless.

On the one hand, perhaps police see Mamdani’s modest reform promises
as tolerable. On the other hand, perhaps they are waiting for an
opportune moment to press for what they always want: more money and
less accountability.

Could the proposed Department of Community Safety cause a fight over
city resources? Mamdani often notes
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that police are stuck with work they don’t want, like mental-health
crisis response. But across the country, police fight to maintain
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their professional authority. In Baltimore
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violence interrupters work to stop retaliatory violence. Because they
won’t share real-time street information with cops, relations are
tense. Police view interrupters as criminals, and interrupters feel
that they have become targets of police sabotage. If the new
department competes for dollars, expect police backlash—the NYPD
arrested
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two interrupters last year.

Maybe Mamdani keeps Tisch and compels her to carry out reforms; maybe
she storms off and the press calls it a crisis. Either way, what
happens next will measure the left’s real strength.

If she walks, organizers should move to block any consensus around a
status-quo safety agenda. The task will be to give Mamdani political
cover to appoint a commissioner actually willing to implement his
program.

If she stays and complies, we should be ready to push for more
ambitious demands: reduced NYPD technology and surveillance capacity,
the end of the gang database and status-quo approaches to gang
policing
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and budget and headcount reductions. We are in the unfortunate
position of needing to organize like hell just to claw back the status
quo we enjoyed in 2019—the city jail population
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nearly doubled under Adams.

In either scenario, we will need to become stronger. The defund
movement in NYC was ruthlessly crushed
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and co-opted
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is part of why the billionaires are able to choose what happens with
the NYPD.

Organizers focused on criminalization may need to engage in electoral
work more often. Mamdani is ostensibly accountable to NYC-DSA, for
example. Mamdani’s allies have also created a nonprofit
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is focused on affordability—but has made no mention of organizing
around safety. There may be a case for joining such organizations to
push internal decision-making to address policing and incarceration.

Labor action is another important tactic. Across the country, police
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and corrections officers use wildcat strikes
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to resist accountability and retaliate
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against criminalized people. Strikes work! Aligning labor with
anti-police organizing magnifies leverage. Twentieth-century movements
succeeded
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by disrupting
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capital to force
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politicians’ hands
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The New Deal and the Civil Rights Act were the result of militant,
disruptive mass action. Effective tactics may seem uncivil
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or illegitimate—that’s too bad for the respectability police.

Organizing efforts could dovetail with Mamdani’s agenda. The
Department of Community Safety will demonstrate the potential of
non-police approaches. That said, the administration’s ability to
move towards abolitionist horizons
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depends on our power.

In an ideal world, Mamdani’s coalition would be so robust that we
could insulate him from the fallout of calling the NYPD’s bluff when
it walks off the job—or firing Tisch if she refuses to budge on more
ambitious steps. Indeed, throwing Tisch under the bus at an opportune
moment could be a great play to undermine the prospects of a potential
threat
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in the next election.

What we learn from the billionaires’ insistence on Tisch is that,
while they’ll merely grumble about a leftist agenda on the cost of
living—and, potentially, higher taxes—they are not prepared to
brook dissent on the running of the policing machine. This is true in
every city where progressives are gaining power. To build a government
that serves working people, police power must be challenged. Winning
the election was an accomplishment, but the NYPD didn’t even see it
as a fight worth joining. That means the real battle still lies ahead.

Now is the time to find a political home for that battle. Everyone has
skills that can contribute to the cause. Perhaps it’s taking notes
in union meetings, signing up for ICE-watch training, or phonebanking
to keep voters engaged. Even one small task matters.

Mamdani can’t beat the NYPD alone. No politician can. The only way
to break the cops’ choke hold on city politics is to become stronger
than them. Tisch’s tenure should remind us what’s at stake: Until
the left can build and sustain real power in the streets, the
billionaires will keep theirs in City Hall.

_Jonathan Ben-Menachem is a PhD candidate in sociology at Columbia
University, where he researches the politics of criminalization and
crime journalism._

_Copyright c 2024 The Nation. Reprinted with permission. May not be
reprinted without__ permission_
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Distributed by__ PARS International Corp_
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* Zohran Mamdani
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* Jessica Tisch
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* NYPD
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* police unions
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