Chi Ossé and Shahana Hanif apply to join DSA’s City Council bloc

New York City Council Members Chi Ossé and Shahana Hanif have applied to join the Democratic Socialists of America’s “City Socialists in Office” bloc, City & State has learned. NYC-DSA plans to hold a special candidate forum on Tuesday, where Ossé and Hanif will be able to make their cases for formally becoming part of the socialist group’s political strategy at the city level. 

Both Ossé and Hanif are members of NYC-DSA but are not part of the City SIO committee, which currently only includes Council Members Tiffany Cabán and Alexa Avilés. All four politicians applied for NYC-DSA’s endorsement when they first ran for City Council in 2021; Cabán and Avilés received the DSA endorsement, while Ossé and Hanif did not.

The socialist group chose to stay out of the 2021 race for the Central Brooklyn seatOssé ended up winning, and the young council member returned the favor, distancing himself from DSA once in office. But Ossé rejoined DSA in the excitement of Zohran Mamdani’s successful mayoral campaign and has since become a reliable surrogate for DSA-backed candidates. Against Mamdani’s wishes, he applied for DSA’s endorsement last year as he prepared to launch an ambitious primary challenge against House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. He failed to win the endorsement, then dropped his campaign.  

Hanif has had her own path to DSA redemption. After DSA chose to endorse Brandon West instead of her in the 2021 Democratic primary for Council District 39, centered on Park Slope. Hanif did the one thing DSA members are never supposed to do: she continued running against the DSA-backed candidate. But Hanif won the race, kept her DSA membership and has generally acted as a close ally of the socialist group. 

West, her one-time opponent, told City & State that he fully supports Hanif joining DSA’s City Council bloc. “DSA and Shahana have been working in different ways together, and she obviously has a good relationship working with both Tiffany and Alexa,” he said. “I know there's a lot of people in DSA who have been either part of her staff or done work with her, or worked on legislation together with her. So I'm supportive of it, and I think we need all the help we can get at the council to get Zohran’s agenda accomplished.”

West helped launch DSA’s City SIO project four years ago, and he said the bloc needs to add more members to support the socialist group’s agenda.“I plan on voting in support of both of them being on City SIO, and I think it's what we need,” he said. “We can't expect to win everything at City Hall without a coalition, without more council members moving together.”

Despite their limited numbers, DSA-aligned council members have played an influential role in the Progressive Caucus. Cabán was recently elected one of the caucus’ two co-chairs, while Avilés was named one of its two vice co-chairs. Hanif previously served as co-chair.