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“I was elected as a democratic socialist and I will govern as a democratic socialist,” New York City’s new mayor Zohran Mamdani announced to vigorous applause at his inaugural speech on January 1, 2026. “I will not abandon my principles for fear of being deemed radical.”

The Mayor’s speech touched on the primary question at play in New York City, a familiar one for progressives nationwide: Will this elected leader be able to translate campaign rhetoric into material changes after entering the court of real-world politics?

When it was reported in December that Jessica Tisch would be retained as police commissioner, some speculated that Mamdani was making, as many New York City mayors have made before him, significant concessions to the political concrete wall of the NYPD. But maintaining a decarceral ethic is crucial to defending those most at risk in New York City, particularly amid Donald Trump’s draconian immigration policies. Mamdani has repeatedly stated that he is “ready for any consequence” in resistance to the president’s deportation regime. In the leadup to his inauguration and following an attempted ICE raid on Canal Street in December, Mamdani posted a brief “know your rights” video to YouTube, a brief primer addressing the basic tools of citizen resistance. Mamdani’s posting of the video also came on the heels of the detention and separation of a Chinese father and his son after a scheduled immigration hearing at 26 Federal Plaza, the site of a substantial number of recent deportations just around the corner from Manhattan’s City Hall. In the video, Mamdani walks through the minimum standard of legal paperwork required for ICE to gain entry into a private residence, listing what can be done in the case of an interaction with agents (filming is permitted; resisting arrest is not), and expresses unequivocal support for the city’s immigrant community. “I’ll protect the rights of every single New Yorker,” he says, “and that includes the more than 3 million immigrants who call this city their home.”

Mamdani’s vocal resistance to Trump’s immigration policy is admirable. What his messaging does not address, however, is another community whose criminalization is deeply entangled with immigration enforcement: sex workers. Migrants and sex workers share a sphere of legal vulnerability, and for many New Yorkers, particularly Asian and Latino undocumented workers, the policing of immigration and sex work operates as a single apparatus. Groups like Red Canary Song, Make the Road New York, and the coalition I organize with, Decrim NY, see the issue of sex work criminalization as, in part, a question of........

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