Click here to read the full piece in Jewish Currents
By Alex Kane
The speaker of New York’s City Council, Julie Menin, placed mayor Zohran Mamdani in a political bind late last month, with the passage of twin bills that would ask the city’s police department to set policies on handling protests outside of schools and houses of worship. The bills have been significantly watered down since Menin announced them in late January as part of a proposal to address antisemitism. But they retain the support of the city’s powerful Jewish establishment groups, while being opposed by many of the mayor’s allies on the left, who say they could empower the police to restrict dissent, especially pro-Palestinian protests.
It all leaves Mamdani, who has to decide whether to sign or veto the measures, in a tough spot, at risk of reawakening the fights with Jewish establishment forces that dogged his electoral campaign. There’s little the mayor can do on the synagogue buffer zones legislation because it passed the council with a veto-proof majority. But he could take a stand on the schools bill.
Education workers are concerned about the schools bill, which they say might restrict protests during a union fight with a school or university. “A bill that so clearly complicates our ability to be able to protest, picket, and exercise our rights is going to be a huge problem for the mayor,” said Brandon Mancilla, the director of a United Auto Workers region that represents thousands of local higher education workers. “He has an opportunity here to show what values and principles he stands for.”
The mayor’s office has signaled opposition to both proposals, telling reporters that the mayor is “aware of the serious concerns regarding these bills’ limiting of New Yorkers’ constitutional rights.” In a March 26th interview on TV channel NY1, Ramzi Kassem, the mayor’s chief counsel, noted that the NYPD itself had said that nothing in the houses of worship bill would change current law enforcement practice, and that “we don’t need a bill for the police department to reiterate what it does.”
Still, according to Sophie Ellman-Golan, the director of strategic communications for Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, it may not be worth vetoing the houses of worship bill, which would be easily overturned by the Council, where 44 of 50 members voted in favor. (City law requires a two-thirds vote to overturn a mayor’s veto.) “If we can’t pull votes off of it, then that doesn’t change what happens, and the result would be just another bad news cycle. So that isn’t attractive,” Ellman-Golan said. Though she opposes both bills, she said “there’s finite resources and time, and I’d rather fight to win policy that actually makes our city safer than have a symbolic fight.”
There is more opposition in the Council to the schools bill, which passed with the votes of just 30 members. Brooklyn Councilwoman Sandy Nurse, a co-chair of the Progressive Caucus, supported the houses of worship bill, but voted no on the schools bill because of the union opposition. “The progressive movement is strongest when labor and progressives are working together, and our labor partners in education felt strongly that this was going to be really harmful for them,” Nurse said in an interview.
Mamdani has until April 26th to decide what to do about both bills.