Mamdani’s ‘citizen engagement’ scam is nothing but – Latest News
What a sick joke: Mayor Zohran Mamdani is burning metropolis money to stage indignant crowds to demand the Rent Guidelines Board — already managed by his appointees! — make good on his rent-freeze marketing campaign promise.
In political circles, “astroturf” is the time period for pretend “grassroots” activism-for-hire; this is simply taxpayer-funded astroturf.
The mayor truly boasts of how his Organize NYC can pay skilled hacks to recruit people to put on this pointless show because the RGB “considers” whether or not to freeze regulated rents for 1 million metropolis residences.
He’s mainly spending public funds (amid what he insists is a finances disaster!) on recruiting his own Mao-style Red Guards to bully any dissenters into line.
Or maybe he’s simply that deep into self-aggrandizing cosplay: Witness the slickly edited social-media recruitment video (“Uncle Mam wants you!”) by which Mamdani opens his Gracie Mansion door to 2 organizers (one named Mohammed, clad in a stylish keffiyeh) informing him of the upcoming RGB listening to.
The mayor says it’s about “engagement” and that he needs landlords there too, but it’s all wink-wink, smirk-smirk.
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Any landlords who dare show up to protest that the freeze will push their buildings into chapter 11 will immediately be surrounded by fanatics shouting them down, whereas Mamdani’s appointees fake to be impressed by this “show of public opinion.”
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It’s the farthest attainable factor from an natural engagement of neighborhood residents, a paid political show to misrepresent the mayor’s misrule as a matter of standard will.
This “cultural revolution” received’t stop with the RGB; subsequent the cadres will besiege different public conferences in help of another Mamdani initiative, whether or not closing streets, demanding town buy the condominium buildings he’s bankrupting, killing Gifted & Talented applications or divesting from Israel.
For all of the tut-tutting when his critics known as Mamdani a “commie,” this supposed Democratic Socialist is proving he doesn’t give a whit about precise democracy.
He might not be an precise old-school communist, but he plainly likes to play one.
