Office of Mass Engagement
The New York City Mayor’s Office of Mass Engagement is an experiment in bringing the tools and practices of grassroots organizing inside city government.
Created by Mayor Zohran Mamdani on his second day in office in January 2026, the office brings together several of New York City’s existing public-engagement functions under a single structure, including the Community Affairs Unit, Public Engagement Unit, NYC Service, and other engagement initiatives. It is led by Commissioner Tascha Van Auken, who previously ran the field operation for Mamdani’s mayoral campaign, mobilizing more than 100,000 volunteers who knocked on more than three million doors.
The premise is a significant departure from the way public engagement often works in cities. Rather than asking residents for feedback after policies have largely been developed—or relying primarily on public meetings attended by people with the time and resources to participate—the office is intended to actively organize New Yorkers into the work of governing.
Its mandate includes reaching communities historically excluded from government decision-making, creating more accessible places for participation, building feedback loops between residents and policymakers, and demonstrating that participation can materially affect government decisions.
The office has begun putting that philosophy into practice through initiatives including Organize NYC, which mobilized residents to participate in Rent Guidelines Board hearings, and Talk to Tenants, a door-to-door campaign connecting renters in buildings with chronic housing violations with organizing resources and information about their right to organize.
Underlying the experiment is a provocative question about civic engagement: what if government stopped treating residents primarily as an audience to be consulted and instead treated them as participants to be organized?
That distinction makes the Office of Mass Engagement an unusual contemporary experiment in the relationship between organizing, civic participation, and local government—and one worth watching as New York tests whether the energy of a political campaign can become an enduring part of governing.
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