Paging New York City’s Social Media Mayor…You Have Lots of Constituents On Hold!
The New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees has spent the last five years fighting to pass a bill protecting their healthcare from diminishment—Mayor Mamdani has ignored their repeated requests for a meeting. But that’s become his modus operandi as New York City Mayor. Photos/Joe Maniscalco
By Joe Maniscalco
A recent Work-Bites Instagram post teasing a story about the EMS crisis facing New York City has garnered 12,949 views at the time of this writing—not an insignificant amount.
But because the Mayor’s Office has refused to acknowledge repeated requests for comment, that’s 12,949 times readers interested in learning Mayor Mamdani’s views, thoughts, and feelings about what happened at St. Francis Preparatory High School in Queens on the morning of Sept 28—were denied that right.
That’s when the mother of a 14-year-old student with a known heart condition had to rush her child to the hospital because calls for an FDNY EMS ambulance had fallen into a dispatcher “abyss.”
Everyone wanting to know what happened on Sept. 28 and how it relates to the City of New York’s recruitment and retention crisis were purposely kept in the dark.
They didn’t even get a “Sorry, no comment” from the Mayor’s Office, which could have told them that Mayor Mamdani was at least cognizant of the issue on some level. But they got nothing.
Instead, they encountered a media blackout and censorship—because this is an administration that simply ignores issues, groups, organizations, and press it doesn’t like—or, maybe, fears.
The Mamdani administration’s preference for social media influencers over other press outlets has already been well established, and you could argue the legitimacy of that kind of policy if you want, but even accepting that bogus premise for a minute doesn’t absolve this administration from its failure to New Yorkers seeking real answers about vital issues.
Let’s use the administration’s own social media metrics—doesn’t 12,949 views merit at least some kind of acknowledgement to requests for comment? If not, what exactly is the threshold for this administration to respond to a press outlet? Does it all come down to “Likes” — and if so, what is the number before this administration deems the public’s questions legitimate?
Of course, all of this is ridiculous. This mayor—not unlike his White House bro Donald Trump—appears to be little more than a social media confection who simply doesn’t want to deal with news outlets that might otherwise undermine the digital persona he has worked so hard to craft since announcing his mayoral run.
Hardworking New Yorkers deserve better.
This should infuriate every taxpayer out there who keeps Mayor Mamdani’s very well-staffed and handsomely paid Press Office in operation. They are paid to respond to requests for comment. That’s their job—even if that response turns out to be, “Sorry, no comment.”
Public housing tenants fighting the demolition of the Fulton and Elliott-Chelsea Houses want a meeting with Mayor Mamdani, too—but haven’t gotten one. Instead, they’ve been ignored.
The New York Post is no fan of Mayor Mamdani, and never will be. But when they sought a comment for a Sept. 30 story about public housing tenants in Chelsea fighting the demolition of their homes—they got a response.
Why not Work-Bites? No one has been more consistent in reporting on Chelsea’s fight against privatization and demolition. And yet, this administration has never acknowledged a single request for comment about the issue that Work-Bites has made. Not a single one.
Work-Bites has already discussed how Mayor Mamdani was more than happy to talk to us at length and entertain our follow up requests for comment when he was still just a mayoral candidate on the campaign trail.
What changed?
All we know for sure is that this is the same Mayor who steadfastly refuses to speak to the New York City Organizaiton of Public Service Retirees about the need to back City Council legislation protecting retiree healthcare from diminishment.
New York City home care workers fighting to end the 24-hour workday have held repeated sit-ins and hunger strikes outside the gates of City Hall—Mayor Mamdani has ignored them all, as well.
Let that, as they say, sink in. The New York City Organization of Public Service Retirees—composed of 9/11 first responders and municipal workers who have helped this city navigate through the most horrendous calamities in its long history—has repeatedly requested a meeting with the Mayor to talk about the need to pass legislation protecting retiree healthcare—and this Mayor has completely ignored them.
This same Mayor has similarly ignored requests to meet with public housing tenants in Chelsea fighting the privatization and demolition of their communities, as well as home care attendants struggling to bring an end to the 24-hour workday that even the Mayor himself said must come to an end.
In the latter case, the older immigrant women of color spearheading the “No More 24” campaign—some of the same “aunties” the Mayor also previously touted—held repeated hunger strikes and sit-ins outside the gates of City Hall, and not once did this NYC-DSA-endorsed Mayor come out to speak to them.
Would Eric Adams have behaved so shamefully? Would Bill de Blasio? What about billionaire Mayor Mike Bloomberg? No doubt they all would.
But the electrified voters who put Mamdani over the top in the last Mayoral election expected a lot more from a Mayor billing himself as a Democratic Socialist. Talk to your NYC-DSA friends, the grumblings about Mamdani’s tenure coming from rank and file members is getting louder.
A newly-released poll gauging Mayor Mamdani’s approval shows 47 % of likely voters responding favorably; 41% unfavorable; and 13% neutral.
What must end is this administration’s attempts to stifle press it doesn’t like. Work-Bites is an independent, nonprofit labor and social justice news outlet—if anything, this Mayor should be making it his business to help us, and other independent media sources out there, grow and thrive.
In increasing totalitarian times, we need all the journalists we can get with the courage and conviction to challenge authorities and hold politicians to account—and that includes Zohran.