Reflections on the First Six Months of Mayor Mamdani’s Administration and Call for Further Action
Adopted July 14, 2026 by the Joint Council
We, the Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys (ALAA), United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 2325, include over 3,000 workers in the legal services sector in the New York City metropolitan area. Rank and file members of ALAA organized for and were essential to Mayor Mamdani’s early endorsement by UAW Region 9A, his first major labor endorsement and a large boost to his fledgling campaign.
As legal workers and working class New Yorkers, ALAA members have a unique perspective on issues related to our work and our communities. In his first six months, Mayor Mamdani has delivered on several of the campaign promises made to ALAA and the UAW. However, there are several key issues on which we urge him to reconsider his position and re-align with his values as a democratic socialist and supporter of labor.
In the first six months of Mayor Mamdani’s administration, he has won significant victories such as $1.2 billion dollars for pre-K and childcare subsidies, enforcement actions against slumlord landlords, worker restitution and reinstatement for wrongfully deactivated delivery workers, and most recently a 2-year rent freeze for rent-stabilized tenants. His administration has also revitalized the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants and created the Office of Community Safety and stated ambitious goals for each. This represents a significant break from the prior administration, and a promising start.
ALAA led the charge within the UAW to endorse Mayor Mamdani because of his commitment to universal childcare, tenants rights, criminal justice, and his actions in support of workers. Since taking office, Mayor Mamdani’s administration has shown a willingness to engage with working class New Yorkers and fight for them. In that spirit, we urge Mayor Mamdani to publicly and vocally support the ALAA shops currently bargaining that have authorized strikes or soon may: Brooklyn Defender Services, Bronx Defenders, Catholic Migration Services, Neighborhood Defender Service, and Justice in Motion. Many of these shops are funded primarily by the city and state. We call upon Mayor Mamdani to personally visit our picket lines and use the city’s funding of these organizations as leverage to directly pressure management to concede to our reasonable demands.
ALAA is gratified that the CityFHEPS lawsuit was settled and the expanded eligibility passed by the City Council in 2023 was partially implemented, but is disappointed to see that 20,000 families would be excluded from eligibility under the settlement. Even more disappointing was the decision not to classify CityFHEPs as an entitlement, meaning eligible families will not receive CityFHEPS if the budget limit is reached in a given year and will be forced to remain in crowded, often unsafe shelters. ALAA urges Mayor Mamdani to return to the City Council next year with a plan to expand CityFHEPS to cover 50,000 families as in the 2023 version of the expansion, and ensure that every eligible family will receive CityFHEPS and a safe and stable home.
Mayor Mamdani’s enforcement actions against A&E Realty resulting in a two million dollar settlement and intervention in the Pinnacle Group bankruptcy are encouraging signs that his administration is more serious about tackling slumlord landlords than previous administrations. However, we urge Mayor Mamdani to go further and fulfill his campaign promise to double or triple fines for open building violations and seize buildings if necessary to protect tenants. We urge Mayor Mamdani to refuse settlements with the worst landlords and seek the maximum amount of fines for open HPD violations, which are often tens of millions of dollars per building for the worst offenders. The revenue generated by those fines can then be used to fulfill campaign promises like expanding the Anti-Harassment Tenant Protection Program, funding the Department of Housing Preservation and Development and the Human Resources Administration (HRA), and fully expanding CityFHEPS.
ALAA was disappointed to see that last winter Mayor Mamdani reinstituted homeless encampment sweeps, a policy which in the past he rightfully said does not connect people in need with housing, but disrupts their lives and destroys their few belongings. We urge Mayor Mamdani to develop a plan to protect homeless New Yorkers from extreme weather conditions without resorting to draconian methods such as sweeps, which he has acknowledged is not an effective policy.
During his campaign, Mayor Mamdani spoke eloquently about the need to reduce incarceration and provide alternate methods of accountability through actions like diverting some 911 calls and creating the Office of Community Safety. ALAA remains encouraged that Mayor Mamdani is aligned with our values in this area, but we urge his administration to focus more of its attention on policing and inhumane conditions affecting New Yorkers and their families.
ALAA urges Mayor Mamdani to address the ongoing arraignment crisis in criminal courts throughout the five boroughs. ALAA public defenders report that people are often left to wait for unconstitutional lengths of time, and conditions in arraignment court are overcrowded and inhumane. People awaiting arraignment have no access to private bathrooms, toiletries, clothes, blankets or communication with the outside world. Access to food and water is entirely up to the discretion of police officers on duty, and there is no medical staff on site to provide life-saving care to individuals in acute health crisis. Due to these conditions, this year a woman was recently forced to give birth in handcuffs during open court, and her newborn baby was forced to be born into a courtroom instead of into a hospital, and Zamiqua Miller and Vincent Thoms died awaiting arraignment. We urge Mayor Mamdani to explore options to halt construction of four new mega-jails within the city and reduce the incarcerated population by providing funding for community-based alternatives centered on restorative justice.
We call on Mayor Mamdani to return to his common-sense policing plan and fire Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who has revived discredited Broken Windows enforcement, lobbied for investment for billions of dollars to create a surveillance system to monitor social media, biometrics, and license plates across the city, and overridden the Civil Complaint Review Board to protect a police officer who killed Allan Feliz in 2019.
Unless Commissioner Tisch is removed, we believe it will be impossible for Mayor Mamdani to follow through on his campaign promise to disband the New York Police Department’s Strategic Response Group (SRG), his campaign promise to close Riker’s Island in 2027 as required by law, his campaign promise to end the transparently racist New York City gang database, his campaign promise to end the city’s cooperation with ICE, and his campaign promise to grant the Civilian Complaint Review Board final authority on pursuing charges against police officers accused of misconduct.
As legal workers and working class New Yorkers, ALAA members urge Mayor Mamdani to consider these reflections and engage with our membership about solutions to the pressing issues contained herein. We believe that Mayor Mamdani’s values are aligned with our union and our communities, and we have been encouraged by his first steps this year. ALAA hopes to engage in a dialogue with Mayor Mamdani’s administration so we may address the above issues and maintain our membership’s long-held support for his administration.
THEREFORE, be it resolved that:
ALAA members are encouraged by Mayor Mamdani’s first six months in office, but call on him to fully re-commit to his values as a democratic socialist and supporter of labor by fully fulfilling his campaign promises described above;
ALAA members express our solidarity with fellow working class New Yorkers who would also benefit from fulfillment of all of Mayor Mamdani’s campaign promises, especially our clients and their families;
ALAA members call upon Mayor Mamdani to personally visit the picket lines of our unions at Justice in Motion, Brooklyn Defenders Service, Bronx Defenders, Neighborhood Defender Service, Catholic Migration Service, and the Center for Family Representation, and to use the city’s leverage over their funding to pressure management to agree to our reasonable demands;
ALAA members call upon UAW Region 9A and the New York Area CAP to set up a meeting between Mayor Mamdani (or if not possible, a senior member of the Mayor’s Office) and ALAA rank and file membership in which ALAA members can provide feedback, inform the Mayor of the situation on the ground, and suggest solutions in an open discussion.