New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani quietly hired a senior adviser who edited a magazine devoted to "gay communism" and called for abolishing the police, and taxpayers are footing the $185,000 salary.
Lena Afridi, who uses they/them pronouns, was named to the senior adviser post in April to counsel First Deputy Mayor Dean Fuleihan "on responses to federal intervention," according to a LinkedIn post Afridi published at the time. The hiring drew no public announcement from City Hall. It surfaced only after the Washington Free Beacon recovered a trail of deleted social media posts in which Afridi endorsed police abolition, praised a convicted Marxist bank robber, and championed the overthrow of capitalism.
Neither City Hall nor Afridi responded to requests for comment from the New York Post, which detailed the scope of Afridi's deleted writings.
Afridi is listed as an editor at Pinko, a publication that describes itself as "communism for fags" and "a collective for thinking gay communism." In a 2019 blog post, Pinko spelled out its vision plainly:
"What do we mean by communism? Something like the freedom not to have to seek our lives on the market, attained through the abolition of all forms of private property, family and the state."
That was the magazine's public manifesto, abolish property, abolish the family, abolish the state. Afridi chose to edit it.
On social media, Afridi went further in a personal capacity. In a now-deleted post, the adviser laid out a position that went well beyond the "defund the police" slogan that dominated progressive politics in 2020:
"On a personal note, outside of work: while I believe that defunding the NYPD is absolutely necessary in order to get much needed resources to the people, I *also* believe that the only way to achieve true liberation is not through reform but abolition of the police."
Not reform. Not reallocation. Abolition. And this is the person Mamdani's administration chose to advise its first deputy mayor on federal policy.
Afridi also told followers to "stop glorifying Gandhi," calling the Indian independence leader a "racist anti-Black misogynist" in deleted posts. The adviser's social media history, recovered by the Free Beacon, paints a picture of someone operating well outside the bounds of conventional left-of-center politics, and deep into radical territory.
Among the deleted posts was a eulogy Afridi published on X for Rita "Bo" Brown, a former member of the George Jackson Brigade, a 1970s Marxist organization. Afridi's tribute did not treat Brown as a cautionary figure. It celebrated her:
"RIP to Rita Bo Brown, a militant butch working class revolutionary and one of the founders of the George Jackson Brigade."
Afridi also wrote a piece for Acacia Magazine about Aaron Bushnell, a U.S. Air Force serviceman who died after setting himself on fire outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. In that piece, Afridi described Bushnell as someone who "died for truth" and is "venerated across the world."
That framing, treating a self-immolation as martyrdom, sits uncomfortably next to the fact that Afridi now draws a six-figure salary advising the mayor of the nation's largest city. Voters in New York did not elect a government that openly venerates political violence and radical ideology. Yet that is what they are paying for.
Mamdani's administration has already drawn scrutiny for controversial stances on crime and victims that have left families demanding answers. The Afridi hiring fits a pattern.
Afridi is not the first Mamdani appointee caught scrubbing incendiary posts before stepping into a taxpayer-funded role. The mayor's unnamed chief equity officer deleted posts that called for taxing wealthy people "to the white meat" and declared "there's NO moderate way to black liberation" before joining the administration.
Cea Weaver, the director of the Mayor's Office to Protect Tenants, wrote in now-deleted posts that homeownership was a "weapon of white supremacy." Weaver was hired to oversee housing policy for a city where millions of families of every background aspire to own a home.
The pattern is consistent: radical statements go up, the statements get deleted, and the job offer follows. The deletions suggest these officials understand their views are politically toxic. The hirings suggest Mamdani does not care, or agrees.
The mayor himself is no stranger to controversy. 9/11 families petitioned to bar him from the 25th anniversary ceremony at Ground Zero after a resurfaced 2023 post raised questions about his judgment. That dispute escalated when former Mayor Rudy Giuliani called Mamdani's planned attendance an affront to the families who lost loved ones on September 11.
The confrontation at Ground Zero produced its own memorable moment when a lip reader revealed what Giuliani told Mamdani during a tense handshake at the ceremony.
Afridi's $185,000 salary places the adviser well above the median household income in New York City. The role, advising the first deputy mayor on "responses to federal intervention", is vaguely defined. No public description of specific duties, deliverables, or performance metrics accompanied the quiet hiring.
New Yorkers struggling with rising costs, crime, and a housing crunch might reasonably ask what, exactly, a self-described gay communist who wants to abolish the police brings to the task of managing the city's relationship with the federal government. The Washington Free Beacon's reporting forced the question into the open. City Hall's silence, no response to press inquiries, has done nothing to answer it.
The Afridi hire also raises a practical question about vetting. Either the Mamdani administration reviewed Afridi's public writings and social media history before extending the offer, or it did not. If it did, the hire was a deliberate choice to install a police-abolition advocate in a senior advisory role. If it did not, the administration failed at basic due diligence for a position paid with public money.
Both answers are damaging. Neither has been addressed.
When a city government hires radicals, deletes the evidence, and refuses to explain itself, the problem is not one rogue adviser, it is the person who signed the offer letter.
