A Civil Rights Agenda for the Next Mayor of New York City

Immigration

Less than one year into Trump’s term, the administration’s assault on immigrant communities has been cruel and unrelenting. Having long attracted immigrants from across the world, New York City is a natural target for the president’s anti-immigrant agenda. We see the administration’s efforts at work every day. ICE agents have made immigration courts in Manhattan the epicenter of their campaign to entrap and arrest immigrants who are going to court and trying to follow the rules. This is happening while immigration officials threaten to unleash scores of federal agents onto our city streets. Meanwhile, the federal administration is cutting corrupt deals with city leaders and suing the city in federal court to try to bully New York into abandoning its longstanding sanctuary policies, which protect our communities.

Defend Sanctuary City Laws

Attacks on New York City and its immigrant communities will likely only escalate. The city’s mayor must take a stand against Trump’s bullying and advance a forward-looking vision to protect the city’s immigrant residents. This begins with a commitment to defend the city’s sanctuary laws without fear or compromise. For decades, New York has refused to misuse the city’s resources for immigration enforcement. This decision is within the city’s rights, and local leaders have written it into the law. The mayor must not negotiate away the city’s protections for immigrant New Yorkers and must defend and strengthen the city’s sanctuary commitments.

Bolster Protections for Immigrant New Yorkers

Holding firm against intimidation is only a starting point. New York City’s sanctuary laws provide a meaningful assurance to immigrant New Yorkers that city employees will not ordinarily deploy city resources to assist ICE. However, these protections are sometimes undermined by loopholes in the law. To remedy these, the mayor must do his part to:

• Pass the New York City Trust Act, which would give New Yorkers harmed by violations of the city’s sanctuary laws an opportunity to seek relief in court.
• Remove harmful and confusing criminal carveouts from city laws that prohibit the Department of Correction and NYPD from honoring detainer requests from ICE.
• Continue funding the city’s landmark New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP) and identify ways to expand the scope of city-funded legal services for immigrants.

Policing

New York City is home to the largest police force in the country and the mayor’s public posture and decisions around public safety often influence conversations around policing, at both local and national levels. Real public safety comes from investing in the kinds of programs and services that meet people’s everyday needs, rather than simply relying on police as the default solution to every problem. But in recent years, the NYPD has resurrected harmful broken windows policing tactics that have led to an increase in stop-and-frisk searches, low-level arrests, and summonses. This doubling down on over-policing comes as the Trump administration targets vulnerable communities and shields law enforcement from consequences for their abuses. Further, at a time when the federal government is cracking down on political protests, the mayor of New York City must push back against repression and defend the right of New Yorkers to have their voices heard.

End Broken Windows Policing

The data is in: broken windows policing doesn’t work. It also destabilizes communities and is marred by racial bias. The next mayor must shift away from abusive, broken windows policing tactics and disband the specialized NYPD units that are the worst offenders. For example, the so-called Neighborhood Safety Teams and Community Response Teams have shown a clear record of racial bias. And their aggressive tactics have led to the highest number of complaints of police misconduct to the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) since 2012.

The mayor must reverse the rise in stop-and-frisk activity, along with the persistent racial disparities that continue to plague these interactions. The NYPD must also end its harsh crackdown on bicyclists, who are now subject to criminal penalties for traffic infractions that require them to appear in court while drivers of cars face only a civil penalty. Delivery workers, many of whom are immigrants, are understandably afraid to appear in court to face these charges. The administration should prioritize less punitive street safety measures.

Create Meaningful Alternative Response Models

New Yorkers need an alternative to calling the police when someone is having a mental health or substance use crisis. The mayor should create response teams of peers (people who themselves have struggled with mental health issues) and EMTs – not police – to assist people experiencing a mental health or substance use-related crisis. The mayor should not rely on police to perform involuntary removals of New Yorkers to hospitals. The Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice should instead support New Yorkers by investing in proven solutions and providing community-based and culturally competent services. To avoid a cycle in which people are bounced from jails to under-funded medical facilities to the streets, vulnerable New Yorkers need access to stable and supportive housing, overdose prevention centers, and programs that offer alternatives to incarceration.

Ensure Accountability within the NYPD

The mayor must work to create a culture of accountability within the NYPD by committing to effective and meaningful discipline and ensuring that the CCRB has the resources and tools it needs to fulfill its mandate to investigate abusive officers and identify systemic concerns. This includes removing barriers that the NYPD has erected that make it harder for CCRB officials to access the evidence they need to complete their investigations in the first place. It also means appointing CCRB members who come from the communities most impacted by aggressive policing and who will prioritize the public’s need for an independent – and determined – misconduct watchdog.

Protect Protestors from Aggressive Policing

The NYPD has a history of violently responding to protests. The mayor must take the following steps to protect the right to protest:

• Commit to fully implementing the reforms outlined in the Payne settlement, which include critical safeguards protecting the right to protest in New York City.
• Support policies that promote de-escalation in NYPD-protester interactions.
• Eliminate the NYPD’s use of hostile crowd control techniques like kettling and mass arrests.
• Limit the NYPD’s deployment of military-style weapons and vehicles.
• Restrict the NYPD’s use of drones to surveil and profile peaceful protesters.
• Severely curtail the use of chemical and acoustic weapons and crowd-control munitions.
• Actively work to repeal the ban on new protests on 5^th Avenue.

The mayor should also eliminate the NYPD’s notoriously brutal Strategic Response Group, which the department has used to violently suppress protest throughout the city. And lastly, the mayor should refuse to allow the NYPD to cooperate with military and federalized National Guard units.

Privacy & Surveillance

The Trump administration is working to expand its use of highly invasive, unregulated, and untested technologies to gather as much personal information about people as possible. The unregulated use of new technologies and increased access to personal information have fueled the administration’s campaigns against immigrants and other vulnerable people. Because these technologies can be used to undermine fundamental rights, the mayor must ensure the city does all it can to protect New Yorkers’ civil rights in the digital realm. The mayor should:

• Ensure algorithms are not rooted in bias and do not undermine anti-discrimination laws.
• Guarantee all New Yorkers meaningful access to and control of their data.
• Sharply limit data collection practices and safeguard collected data so it is only used for intended purposes.
• Restrict the use of biased and invasive surveillance technologies.
• Close the digital divide by providing reliable, privacy-protecting high-speed internet to communities in need.

Provide Transparency into How the City Uses Algorithms and AI

The mayor must push for reforms that ensure people are fully informed about when and how algorithms and artificial intelligence tools deployed in New York City are making decisions impacting their lives. Without this transparency, New Yorkers cannot trust that these systems are accurate and unbiased.

Restrict Surveillance Technology

The mayor must ensure New Yorkers are not surveilled, targeted, discriminated against, or criminalized by invasive, flawed, and biased technology. The mayor must push to strictly regulate biometric surveillance – like facial recognition technology – in law enforcement, housing, public accommodations, and other areas where our fundamental rights are at stake, or where people cannot give informed consent. It is critical that New York City curtail the use of technologies such as license plate readers and police drones by significantly limiting when they can be deployed, how long collected data may be retained, and how data can be used and shared.

Criminal Legal System

The Trump administration is pushing draconian, outdated, and ineffective “tough-on-crime” policies that are likely to undermine our quality of life and supplant proven methods for advancing public safety. It is critical that the mayor resist political pressure to roll back or stall criminal legal system reform that enhances justice. Instead, the mayor should protect all New Yorkers by addressing the deadly humanitarian crisis at Rikers Island and investing in housing, public health programs, and social services that can truly keep the city safe in the long run and free police to engage in the law enforcement responsibilities for which they are most suited.

Take Necessary Steps to Close Rikers’ Doors

Rikers is a humanitarian crisis right here in New York City. Too many people are detained at Rikers Island simply because they cannot afford to buy their freedom through bail. People continue to die at Rikers month after month. The jail is also a de facto mental health facility, with many people receiving  treatment at Rikers rather than an appropriate clinical setting.

Because a jail stay should never be a death sentence, the city successfully focused on decarceration during the early days of the pandemic. Despite reaching a historic low in April 2020, the Rikers population has now soared to over 7,000.

A number of factors have contributed to this rise. Judges have continued to require excessive bail of people likely to return to court. People facing mental health challenges continue to be criminalized. And, the spillover effects of the crisis in the state prison system has delayed transfers from Rikers for people sentenced to state prison. Making things even worse, overcrowding has prevented incarcerated people from accessing rehabilitative programming and medical and mental health care.

The mayor must do everything in his power to close Rikers. This requires adopting policies to reduce the jail population. The mayor should immediately expand the release of individuals detained at Rikers Island through the 6-a early release program and local conditional release commission. The mayor must also work closely with the Governor and the State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision to address the state’s failure to successfully transfer people sentenced to state prisons. These common sense reforms will lead to permanently shutting Rikers’ doors, as city law requires.

Ensure Humane Conditions and Ban ICE in NYC Jails

The mayor must protect the rights of every person detained in New York jails, taking the following steps:

• End solitary confinement by any name.
• Defend New York City’s sanctuary laws from Trump, who is willing to use every tool to criminalize New Yorkers. This includes withdrawing any plans to permit ICE to have an office on Rikers Island.
• Commit to restoring the special housing unit for transgender, gender non-conforming, non-binary and intersex (TGNCNBI) people at Rikers. The mayor must finalize a gender-affirming policy that houses people consistently with their gender identities and ensures that staff respect a person’s gender identity.

The mayor should also support and sign legislation that would protect the constitutional rights of people incarcerated or accused of crimes. In all decisions, the mayor should understand that incarcerated New Yorkers are people who deserve respect, care, and second chances.

Education

As leader of the largest school district in the country, the mayor of New York City is one of the most influential public education policymakers in the world. Yet, the threats to children and families, and to the entire institution of public education, have never been more dire. The Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education mean our city has to pick up the slack, fighting harder than ever to deliver the support and education kids have a right to receive.

Our next mayor must advance a bold vision for public education that protects and engages students and families, supports educators to do their best work, ensures classrooms, libraries and curricula are relevant, dynamic and engaging, and prioritizes democratic values in schools.

Protect Vulnerable Children

The deliberately cruel agenda of the Trump administration threatens the rights and safety of many New York children, particularly LGBTQ and immigrant kids and families. But the mayor can make our schools a place where these children and families are safe, welcome, and supported.

To do this, the mayor must strengthen New York City Public Schools’ (NYCPS) protocols for protecting children, families and their data from ICE, and codify these protections in a Chancellor’s Regulation. Additionally, we call on the mayor to declare that in 2026 all school personnel – including contractors, bus drivers, and school safety officers – will receive training on the laws and regulations protecting certain vulnerable groups of students. These groups include LGBTQ and gender non-conforming children and families, immigrant children and families, families with limited English proficiency, and other vulnerable community members. Too often, members of the NYPD and other outside personnel are poorly trained or outright dismissive of legal protections for kids. With the stakes higher than ever, it is essential that NYCPS close these gaps.

Finally, with the federal government attacking institutions that prioritize diversity, inclusion and equity, our new mayor must join with the State Education Department in upholding these essential New York values.

Invest in School Climate, Not Cops

New York City employs the largest school police force in the country. Too often, these officers contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline by responding to misbehavior with criminal consequences that can haunt a child for life. School metal detectors are one of the major points of conflict for students and police because they are often used to confiscate everyday belongings such as cell phones, school supplies, and personal hygiene items. These interactions reduce students’ trust in the adults in their school, which makes everyone less safe.

New York City spends an exorbitant amount of money to place police officers and equipment in every school, including elementary schools. The city could better spend these funds improving school buildings, investing in classrooms and extracurricular activities, and hiring support personnel such as school psychologists, social workers, and school nurses—all positions that are directly threatened by Congressional cuts to Medicaid.

Schools should also avoid using the state’s new bell-to-bell cell phone ban to increase suspensions or other punitive punishments. As past data shows, Black students are most likely to be hit with harsh discipline for misbehavior.

Protect and Expand School Libraries

Democratic values, including the freedom to read, are currently under attack. In New York City, we have seen schools dumping or destroying library books to comply with ideologically motivated attempts at censorship and pressure from right-wing groups like Moms for Liberty. But healthy school libraries are a foundational element of democratic education, and access to diverse viewpoints is one way we prepare the next generation to thrive in a pluralistic, democratic society. The mayor must fight for freedom of expression and the freedom to learn by investing in school library facilities, hiring more librarians, and ensuring school principals comply with the law when it comes to students’ access to books.

Invest in Learning, Not Testing

For too long, bureaucrats have dominated our schools using centralized mandates, wasteful contracting, and opaque, non-democratic decision making. To make city schools a model for the country, our mayor must embrace student-centered learning, rich and culturally responsive curricula, and the intelligence and judgment of highly qualified educators. Our public schools deserve support to meet the unique challenges of our diverse student body, as well as the same flexibility and trust that we give charter schools. Additionally, the mayor must move away from high-stakes standardized tests, an outdated and ineffective tool for educational decision-making that has fueled and justified New York City schools’ extreme racial and socioeconomic segregation.

Gender Justice

The Trump presidency is an existential threat to reproductive freedom, LGBTQ rights, and families. New York City has an obligation to lead the way in developing policies that support broad, inclusive gender justice.

Ensure Reproductive Health Care Access at City Facilities and Increase Funding for Care

Across the nation, we see an unprecedented effort to eliminate access to pregnancy-related care, including abortion. Against this backdrop, it is essential that the next mayor work with the city council to increase investment in abortion and other sexual and reproductive health care services. The incoming mayor must also ensure that Health and Hospitals facilities, as well as Department of Health and Mental Hygiene facilities, continue to deliver comprehensive reproductive health care. This care must encompass abortion and contraception.

Support Transgender, Gender-Nonconforming, Nonbinary, and Intersex New Yorkers

Starting from the highest levels of the federal government and in states across the nation, we face a concerted effort to erase transgender people from public life. Against this backdrop, it is essential that the next mayor work with the city council to increase investment in gender-affirming care and trans-led organizations. The incoming mayor must also ensure that Health and Hospitals facilities, as well as Department of Health and Mental Hygiene facilities, continue to deliver gender-affirming care, including to young people.

Similarly, New York City has historically been a leader in providing transgender people with accurate identity documents. New Yorkers have long been able to change the gender marker on their city-issued birth certificates and to use the X gender marker. Because identity documents are required for people to participate in society – to rent an apartment, access public benefits, open a bank account, enroll a child in school, or drive a vehicle – it is vital that New Yorkers are able to use accurate gender markers. The incoming mayor must do everything in their power to support city council legislation that requires some city agencies to offer X gender markers and ensure that every agency that collects gender or sex information offers an X designation.

Support New York City Families

Reproductive and gender justice requires that parents be able to raise their children in safe and affordable communities. Yet half of working-age households in New York City earn incomes  insufficient to meet their basic needs. This affordability crisis weighs heavily on Black and Brown mothers, particularly those who are single parents. Perversely, the New York City Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) too often responds to these families’ challenges with blame and punishment, subjecting them to stressful and traumatic investigations. ACS too frequently removes children from their homes because of poverty-related conditions, like food and housing insecurity or lack of access to childcare. The incoming mayor must prioritize policies that support families’ ability to survive and thrive together while dismantling punitive and racially biased responses to poverty. The mayor should:

• Invest in guaranteed access to affordable, high-quality childcare for all New York families, regardless of immigration status, as such care continues to be out of reach for over 80 percent of the city’s families.
• Reduce unnecessary surveillance by requiring ACS to inform families of their rights at the beginning of child protective investigations.
• End the practice of drug testing pregnant patients without consent and reporting them to ACS.