Jabez Chakraborty via a Family handout
On January 26, Jabez Chakraborty, a young resident of Queens, was shot by the NYPD, an agency whose leadership supposedly serves at the pleasure of our mayor. The details of this case are as familiar as they are emotional. Mr. Chakraborty apparently suffers from mental illness, and a desperate family called 911 in a moment of crisis. The NYPD decided, like the proverbial hammer who sees himself surrounded by nails, to solve the problem with the only tool they seem mentally capable of using. According to the family, the NYPD attempted to seize their phones after the shooting and interrogate them like they were criminals.
This is a story that rings especially personal for me. In the early 2000s my uncle, who suffered from schizophrenia his entire life, was murdered by Pennsylvania police after he allegedly charged one with a knife. Unlike Mr. Chakraborty, his family, specifically my grandfather who lived within a mile or two of the incident, was spared witnessing it firsthand. Much like the story of Jordan Neely I was deeply disturbed by the incident. One would expect the outcome of events like these to change under a socialist mayor, but the truth is unfortunately otherwise.
Zohran Mamdani’s initial response was to thank the “first responders” and state that he was looking into the “officer involved shooting.” It should be clear by now that using passive language to describe police shootings, as numerous commentaries and studies have pointed out, obfuscates responsibility and defends state violence. At the same time Zohran flattened the police, who nearly took a vulnerable man’s life, to the category of “first responders” as if they were EMS workers delivering care, and thanked the same people who harassed and threatened a traumatized family.
Days later, under intense pressure from community organizations like Desis Rising Up & Moving (DRUM), a key early supporter of Mamdani’s campaign, he released another statement. This was an improvement from the first, but also included no apology. It decentered the so-called “first responders” and recentered Mr. Chakraborty and his family, but did not rescind or otherwise contradict his prior statement. It called for the Queens district attorney not to charge Mr. Chakraborty for the alleged events that convinced the police to shoot him. He further stated that an investigation is underway and that body camera footage will be released.
Mamdani has previously spoken not only of the need to end police violence, but also for a society that shows compassion and support for the mentally ill. For some, his initial statement came as a shock. For others, this was all too predictable, a car crash in slow motion that began two years ago when our future mayor stated he would not use the “language of defunding the police.” For others still, this ordeal is not a question of the inherent goodness of Mamdani or his “selling out.” It is a more fundamental question: what does it mean for a socialist to take executive power within a capitalist state upheld through cruel violence?
Socialism is the understanding that our class society is built upon inherent antagonisms which cannot be solved through the individual merits or desires of those in power. The capitalist state is antagonistic to the worker because it exists to manage the contradiction between classes in favor of the capitalist. A socialist may hope to expose this nature. They may even do so “from the inside.” But they cannot hope to change it. The goal of the socialist party is to organize workers against their natural antagonists, and to use collective numbers and knowledge to defeat them. A socialist elected official who forgets these fundamental facts will become lost in the wilderness.
Executive power, which appears to nominally control the state’s repressive forces, heightens these contradictions to an embarrassing degree. We are told, for example, that Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch serves at the pleasure of the mayor. But when Mamdani failed to replace Tisch—a wildly reactionary commissioner from the previous administration—we are also told that he had no choice. This comes a bit closer to the truth. Mamdani clearly has his hands tied when it comes to the NYPD.
New York City’s administration is not built to be vulnerable to the accident of the occasional election. Because the capitalist state is not truly democratic, both de facto and de jure, there are hard limits on how far the law can take us. It is the job of the socialist party and its elected officials to take the movement to that limit and push beyond its boundaries through collective political action. It is the job of any executive, on the other hand, to maintain the basic functions of the state, even its most grotesque functions. The needs of the state triumph over the needs of the working class.
The shooting of Mr. Chakraborty left me feeling a personal connection to a news story that people of my race and gender are often spared. Twenty years ago, my family, in their shock and naivety, did not press charges or otherwise pursue recourse for justice. Within the system of capitalism, the mentally ill are often cast aside. Without having a place in the system, it is better to be rid of them. But socialism is the belief that when we eliminate exploitation as the law governing society, the true value of each of us will be allowed to shine. My family placed their trust in the essential goodness of the state. To save our family members, neighbors, and friends, we need to be clear-minded about who our enemies are. We need to find deliverance among ourselves.
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