Sarsour warns she’ll hold NYC mayor frontrunner accountable on NYPD unit

Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour issued a veiled warning Saturday night to the front-runner for New York City mayor. Zahran MamdaniShe said she would “hold Zahran accountable” for fulfilling her campaign promises, including dismantling the NYPD unit that monitors terrorist threats, protests, and riots.

In an Instagram live broadcast, obtained by Fox News Digital, Sarsour told her followers that Mamdani’s election does not mean that the network that supports him “will let him do whatever he wants when he gets to the City Council.”

Mamdani’s teacher, Linda Sarsour, said during a live broadcast on Instagram that she would “hold him accountable.” (Reuters)

“I just want you all to know that I will not work in Zahran’s administration,” Sarsour said. “I’m not going to work at City Hall because, guess what? There have to be people like me willing to stay out there.”

“Our friends at home need people outside to hold them accountable. To say: We see you. We are paying attention.”

Neither Sarsour nor MPower Action, the political nonprofit she co-founded, responded to a request for comment.

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Member of Democratic Socialists of America Along with Mamdani, Sarsour was acting Political guide To Mamdani. In 2017, they discussed city council candidate Khader Al-Yateem, who was endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, in the race he lost. Soon after, Mamdani joined the board of directors of the Islamic Democratic Club of New York, which Sarsour co-founded. She endorsed Mamdani’s winning run for New York General Assembly and was an early supporter when his mayoral race was announced.

MPower Action is one of 110 groups in a broad coalition Democratic Party affiliates working with labor unions, Muslim and South Asian groups to elect New York City’s first Muslim mayor.

Activist Linda Sarsour, shown here protesting near the ICE field office in New York, has been described as Mamdani’s mentor. (Eric McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images)

In the live broadcast, Sarsour said she and her coalition will be frank if Mamdani fails to meet expectations.

“When he does something when he’s at City Hall and he’s wrong, I’ll tell him he’s wrong,” she said.

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“Voting for Zahran is not ‘We will vote for Zahran and we will let him do what he wants when he gets to the city council.’ “Our mission as a movement is to hold everyone who goes to the city council accountable,” Sarsour said.

Although Mamdani regularly invoked his religious roots during the campaign, Sarsour has rejected the allegations Mamdani campaign It is centered around religion.

“Our candidate is there, and he happens to be Muslim,” she said.

She noted that he refrained from expressing his pro-Palestinian activity.

“None of the campaigns were at all like ‘Free Palestine’ or that Muslims would get additional rights. It just happened to be part of Zahran’s identity. But that wasn’t actually his campaign.”

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Mamdani’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

During the election campaign, Mamdani said he would keep Jessica Tisch in her position Police Commissioner He later said in a podcast that he expected her to follow his directions, including dissolving the NYPD’s elite Strategic Response Group, which monitors terrorist threats, protests and riots.

Activist Linda Sarsour addresses attendees at a vigil for Nabara Hassanein, a 17-year-old Muslim girl who was killed by a bat-wielding motorist near a mosque in Virginia, Manhattan, New York, US, June 20, 2017. Photo taken June 20, 2017. REUTERS/Amr El-Feki – RTS188WI (Reuters)

“I think everyone will follow my lead. I will be the mayor of the city,” Mamdani said in the podcast.

Founded in 2015, NYPD It has deployed the Strategic Response Group at anti-Israel demonstrations since Hamas’s invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, when protests erupted across New York City, many led by the same groups now supporting Mamdani’s campaign. Sarsour and Mamdani participated in those protests. In November 2024, Mayor of New York Eric Adams Tisch appointed a longtime police veteran to be the city’s police commissioner.

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“I wasn’t really happy with the news that he was going to keep Tish in the NYPD,” Sarsour said.

She struck a chord with Mamdani, saying, “What’s most important is that the police commissioner in New York City works for the mayor. They’re not separate elected officials. That means that if Zahran says to Tesch, ‘You have to do ABC,’ Tesch has to do what the mayor says.”

Sarsour continued: “Now, if you don’t do that and oppose the mayor, then we will have to go to Zahran and say: You definitely made the wrong decision here.” “What are you going to do to put the police commissioner in charge of the plan?”

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Sarsour implicitly acknowledged the messaging success achieved by Mamdani’s seemingly contradictory alliance between the Democratic Socialists of America and controversial clerics, such as Siraj Wahhaj, who served as a character witness for one of the architects of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that killed six people.

“You cannot be a Marxist, a jihadist, an Islamist, a fundamentalist Muslim, or whatever they call it, at the same time,” Sarsour said. “You have to choose a side. We can either be theocrats or leftists. Such things don’t go together.”

Sarsour told her followers that Mamdani would be indebted to her and his other supporters if he won.

“When Zahran is inaugurated in January, as we move forward with this mayor, we have to be the people out there,” she said. “Zahran will have to tell his critics on the other side to say: Look out that window, these people out there, these voters, these activists, these organizers out there, I am accountable to them, because they are the ones who helped me get there.”

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Sarsour also expressed her support for And two other Muslim candidates: Minneapolis mayoral candidate Amar Fateh and Jersey City Mayor Musa Ali, who are endorsed by Emgage Action and CAIR Action, two 501(c)(4) political nonprofits are also endorsing Mamdani.

Citing the Arabic phrase “God willing,” she added, “God willing, you know, we’re starting a new kind of politics, right?”