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

Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour issued a thinly veiled warning to New York mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani on Saturday night, saying she is going to “maintain Zohran accountable” for following by on marketing campaign guarantees, together with dismantling an NYPD unit that displays terrorism threats, protests and riots.

In an Instagram livestream obtained by Fox Information Digital, Sarsour advised her followers that selecting Mamdani doesn’t imply the community backing him will “let him do no matter he desires when he will get to Metropolis Corridor.”

Mamdani’s mentor Linda Sarsour mentioned throughout an Instagram livestream that she is going to “maintain him accountable.” (Reuters)

“I need you all to know that I cannot be working for the Zohran authorities,” Sarsour mentioned. “I am not going to work at Metropolis Corridor as a result of guess what? There have to be individuals like me who’re keen to remain out.”

“Our buddies on the within want individuals on the surface to carry them accountable. To say, ‘We see you. We’re paying consideration.’”

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

INSIDE THE MAMDANI MACHINE: SOROS CASH, SOCIALISTS AND RADICAL IMAMS DESIGN ZOHRAN MAMDANI’S ROAD TO POWER

Sarsour is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America together with Mamdani and has served as a political mentor to Mamdani. In 2017, they teamed as much as subject a municipal candidate, Khader El-Yateem, backed by the Democratic Socialists of America, in a race that he misplaced. Not lengthy after, Mamdani joined the board of the Muslim Democratic Membership of New York, of which Sarsour was a co-founder. She supported Mamdani’s profitable race for the New York Normal Meeting and was one of many first supporters when he introduced his race for the mayor’s job.

MPower Motion is certainly one of 110 teams in a broad coalition of Democratic Get together members working with labor, Muslim and South Asian teams to elect New York Metropolis’s first Muslim mayor.

Activist Linda Sarsour, pictured right here protesting outdoors the New York Discipline Workplace of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is described as a mentor to Mamdani. (Erik McGregor/LightRocket through Getty Pictures)

Within the livestream, Sarsour mentioned she and her coalition will communicate out if Mamdani doesn’t stay as much as expectations.

“If he does one thing whereas he is at Metropolis Corridor and he is flawed, I’ll inform him he is flawed,” she mentioned.

MAMDANI’S PAST ‘COMFORTABLE CRIME’ FOR POLICE ‘scares MANY NEW YORKERS’ FOR GOOD REASON: NYC CRIME EXPERT

“Voting for Zohran doesn’t suggest, ‘We’ll vote for Zohran and simply let him do no matter he desires when he will get to Metropolis Corridor.’ Our job as a motion is to carry everybody who goes to Metropolis Corridor accountable,” Sarsour mentioned.

Regardless of Mamdani commonly invoking his non secular roots in the course of the marketing campaign, Sarsour rejected the declare that Mamdani’s marketing campaign is concentrated on faith.

“Our candidate is strolling round there and occurs to be Muslim,” she mentioned.

She famous that he avoided expressing his pro-Palestinian activism.

“Not one of the campaigns have ever been like ‘Free Palestine’ or the Muslims will get additional rights. It simply occurs to be one thing that’s a part of who Zohran is. However that hasn’t truly been his marketing campaign.”

MAMDANI TORN BY RIVALS FOR UNPOPULAR STAND DURING FIERY DEBATE IN NYC: ‘YOU WILL NOT SUPPORT ISRAEL’

The Mamdani marketing campaign didn’t instantly return a request for remark.

In the course of the marketing campaign, Mamdani mentioned he would maintain Jessica Tisch as police commissioner and later mentioned in a podcast that he would count on her to observe his directives, together with disbanding the NYPD’s elite Strategic Response Group, which displays terrorism threats, protests and riots.

Activist Linda Sarsour addresses attendees at a vigil for Nabra Hassanen, a 17-year-old Muslim woman killed by a baton-wielding motorist close to a mosque in Virginia, Manhattan, New York, US, June 20, 2017. Picture taken June 20, 2017. REUTERS/Amr Alfiky – RTS188WI (REUTERS)

“I believe everybody will observe my lead. I would be the mayor,” Mamdani mentioned within the podcast.

The NYPD, based in 2015, has deployed the Strategic Response Group to anti-Israel demonstrations because the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023, when protests broke out in New York Metropolis, many led by the identical teams now supporting Mamdani’s marketing campaign. Sarsour and Mamdani participated in these protests. In November 2024, New York Mayor Eric Adams appointed longtime police veteran Tisch as town’s police commissioner.

MAMDANI’S GOD SQUAD: THE clerics, activists and political operatives behind him

Sarsour mentioned, “I wasn’t actually thrilled with the information that he was going to arrest Tisch for the NYPD.”

She struck the identical chord as Mamdani, saying, “A very powerful factor is that in New York Metropolis, the police commissioner works for the mayor. They aren’t individually elected officers. In order that signifies that when Zohran tells Tisch, “You must do ABC,” Tisch has to do what the mayor says.

“If she would not try this and goes towards the mayor, then we’ll should go to Zohran and say, ‘You completely made the flawed choice right here,” Sarsour continued. “What are you going to do to carry your police commissioner accountable for the plan?”

MEET MAMDANI’S RADICAL ADVICE CIRCLE INCLUDING COMMUNIST ACTIVIST AND ANTI-ISRAEL LAWYERS

Sarsour tacitly acknowledged the success of Mamdani’s seemingly contradictory alliance of the Democratic Socialists of America with controversial clerics reminiscent of Siraj Wahhaj, who served as a personality witness for one of many architects of the 1993 World Commerce Heart bombing that killed six individuals.

“You’ll be able to’t be a Marxist and a jihadist and an Islamist and a basic Muslim, or no matter they name him, on the identical time,” Sarsour mentioned. ‘You must select a facet. Both we’re theocrats, or we’re left-wing. As if these items do not go collectively.’

Sarsour advised her followers that Mamdani will owe her and his different supporters if he wins.

“If Zohran is inaugurated in January and we transfer ahead with this mayor, we the individuals should be outdoors,” she mentioned. “Zohran should say to his personal critics on the opposite facet that they need to truly say, ‘Look out that window, these individuals outdoors, these voters, these activists, these organizers standing outdoors, I’m accountable to them as a result of they’re those who helped me get there.’”

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP

Sarsour additionally expressed help for 2 different Muslim candidates: Minneapolis mayoral candidate Amar Fateh and Jersey Metropolis Mayor Mussa Ali, who’s backed by Emgage Motion and CAIR Motion, two 501(c)(4) Muslim political nonprofits that additionally endorse Mamdani.

Invoking the Arabic expression for “God keen,” she added: “Inshallah, you understand, we’re beginning a brand new form of politics, proper?”