Photo Credit: Ken Lund
Next week, New York City DSA members will vote on whether or not to double the size of our bloc on the City Council by admitting Chi Ossé and Shahana Hanif into our City Socialists-in-Office (SIO) Committee. This move comes at an extraordinary time, as Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani takes the mayor’s office in the face of a hostile City Council majority.
Typically, our elected officials run for and win their seats with NYC-DSA’s endorsement. Unlike many advocacy organizations, our endorsement isn’t just a voter recommendation. It means boots on the ground, and a commitment from hundreds of our members to support the campaign’s field, fundraising, and comms operations and play a predominant role in developing strategy. This isn’t a blank check; it’s a robust understanding between the chapter and its candidates, who, in return for our support, are asked to share campaign data with the chapter, and, if victorious, vote as a bloc and develop shared messaging and strategy with other socialist electeds as part of the SIO Committee.
The expectations are clear—our electoral project isn’t only about shared political beliefs, it’s about alignment in action, strategic orientation, and a shared ownership of collective work. NYC-DSA members are the ultimate arbiters of whether or not an individual should represent our organization. The nature of our endorsement remains a live question, as its parameters are constantly re-interrogated and adjusted by members as times and conditions change.
Vote YES on Chi Ossé
NYC-DSA’s recent relationship with Chi is no secret; his prospective long-shot bid for Congress against Hakeem Jeffries, and its narrow defeat by a vote of NYC-DSA membership, have been covered widely by the media.
Chi has had a rocky relationship with NYC-DSA. He took a step back from the organization after failing to receive the chapter’s endorsement in his 2021 City Council race. He distanced himself from the chapter publicly after October 7th, and has accepted support from interest groups like the pro-real estate Open New York. Despite joining with DSA electeds in the City Council in voting against Eric Adams’ budgets in 2022 and 2023, Chi voted for the 2024 budget, which marked a significant increase in funding for the NYPD.
This history provoked an array of opposition to his potential endorsement, and his four years on the City Council were put under a microscope. Chi, evidently surrounded by NYC-DSA insiders and conscious of the widespread skepticism towards his candidacy, made earnest attempts to course-correct and address the concerns of his opposition. He brought on members from across the chapter’s political spectrum into his Kitchen Cabinet, and courted many segments of the chapter beyond its electorally-oriented locus, taking meetings with leaders in Afrosoc and the Anti-War Working Group. He waged a relentless charm offensive, mobilizing many online supporters to his defense, but also pounding the pavement: attending a flurry of branch meetings, socials, and other chapter events.
At his endorsement forum, he made big promises. He committed to applying to join the City SIO Committee, take firmer stances on policing and Palestine, and offered sincere remorse for his previous shaky engagement with the chapter.
When he still came up short in the vote, he could easily have disappeared once again. Instead, he made good on many of those promises. He joined our electeds (as well as Shahana Hanif) in signing DSA’s pledge for City Councilmembers to use their offices to fight for municipal divestment from the genocide in Gaza. He has continued to be a prolific and energetic presence on the ground in the chapter, speaking at the launch parties for several of our 2026 candidates, including Eon Huntley and Conrad Blackburn, and publicly endorsing and fundraising for our entire slate. Finally, he followed through on his commitment to apply for the City SIO Committee.
Many skeptics might question the sincerity of these actions and weigh whether or not they exonerate him of prior grievances. Skepticism is healthy, but a strategy built on guessing intentions is a fool’s errand. Chi has taken every possible action to build the level of mutual trust with NYC-DSA needed to be a socialist in office. As our 2026 slate’s most enthusiastic supporter, he is, in many ways, acting de facto as a stronger SIO-in-waiting than many of our current SIOs.
Chi has earned the right to prove us wrong, and NYC-DSA members, as well as the Citywide Leadership Committee, should vote to admit him to the City SIO.
Vote NO on Shahana Hanif
Similar to Chi, Shahana has a long history on the fringe of NYC-DSA. She beat NYC-DSA’s endorsed candidate, Brandon West, in her 2021 City Council race. Despite being a chapter member, she never joined the City SIO.
Despite signing onto the chapter’s Defund NYPD pledge, Shahana and several other high-profile progressives voted in favor of Eric Adams’ 2022 budget, later apologizing for the role she played in devastating cuts to city libraries and public schools. More recently, she has conflated protests against illegal Israeli land sales with acts of vile antisemitism in Mississippi. This is particularly dangerous at a time when the right-wing City Council majority and the Governor, fresh off of her endorsement from Mayor Mamdani, are pursuing draconian legal changes to all but force land sale activists underground.
To her credit, Sarahana voted against Eric Adams’ 2024 budget and even joined the chapter’s press release in a joint statement with the SIOs. Like Chi, she also signed DSA’s Palestine pledge for City Councilmembers. However, she has not been particularly involved in the chapter, nor does she seem interested in doing so. Besides her husband, who is a DSA member, the chapter has little presence in her core campaign team or Council office. Unlike Chi, Shahana faced a competitive re-election campaign in 2025 against a Zionist challenger from the right in Maya Kornberg. Against the expectations of many in the chapter, she declined to pursue a chapter endorsement. This warrants serious scrutiny.
It’s no coincidence that our endorsement application is incredibly rigorous. More rigorous, in fact, than the process by which sitting elected officials join. Candidates must submit to several stages of review, including votes at the working group, branch, occasionally citywide, and leadership levels. They must submit responses to an exhaustive questionnaire (which sitting elected officials like Shahana are waived from submitting) gauging their willingness to engage with the chapter’s strategy on a litany of issues, from identifying publicly as a socialist to complying with the chapter’s policy positions.
So why skirt an on-ramp into NYC-DSA that demands more rigorous scrutiny, while under pressure from a right-wing challenger, but attempt to expedite your way onto the organization in a decidedly less demanding manner when there is no active threat to your re-election?
No doubt Shahana had ample reason not to be a card-carrying socialist when burnishing her credentials for Park Slope voters. But how one chooses to navigate pressure is an informative test. If NYC-DSA wanted elected officials who were only willing to call themselves socialists and represent DSA as lame duck representatives with a favorable Mayor in Gracie Mansion, we would surely have many more endorsees in office. But our electoral strategy explicitly rejects what is easy, forgoing the tactics of the advocacy organization to embrace the harder road of meticulously building power.
As went the shorthand when Chi pursued our endorsement against Jeffries: “you take big risks with people you trust”. Shahana has not yet demonstrated that she is someone NYC-DSA can trust. Members should reject her application to join the City SIO.
On Strategy
NYC-DSA is an exciting place to be right now. DSA just passed 100,000 members nationally for the first time ever. Zohran Mamdani is the Mayor, and we are running our most ambitious State Assembly slate yet. It’s clear that many elected officials on the fringes of our project rightly appraise the opportunities offered by carrying a DSA card. As Socialist Majority’s David Turner writes, “that a politician sees our organization as a potential vehicle for advancement shouldn’t necessarily be a cause for alarm.” To the extent that opportunism attracts external actors attempting to curry favor, it is both natural and even productive. But if we fail to subordinate those approaching us to the expectations of our project, it will not reflect any real increase in our power.
Our endorsement is so sought after precisely because it holds candidates to high standards. Endorsements that fail are hugely formative to the chapter’s strategy and political direction, as members collectively adjust the parameters of the project and respond to shifting political conditions. Voting down Sarah Batchu and Chi’s endorsements remains the most critical exercise of our chapter’s imperfect member democracy this year.
As our project matures and our political power grows, we must continue to build the discipline and rigor of our electoral project. Our standards need to go up—and therefore become harder for external actors to manipulate—rather than down. It is precisely because NYC-DSA is such an exciting place to be that we should demand more from prospective SIOs. We have leverage, which we should use to set the terms of engagement.
Chi’s endorsement being voted down is a perfect example. Prior to his candidacy, many NYC-DSA members might not have considered attendance at branch events to be an important endorsement factor, but now it feels like it should be the standard. As we refine our political practice, the bar gets higher. Doing so intentionally, strategically, and balancing that process with changing political conditions (we won’t be operating from a position of strength forever) is how we build political power.
Setting the bar higher, even if it means asking another applicant to return to the drawing board, will encourage deeper engagement with NYC-DSA, discourage extractive opportunism, and redefine our relationship with the progressive actors around us towards the position of senior partner. Members are the ultimate arbiters and should act accordingly.
From The Socialist Tribune via This RSS Feed.