Mina Farahmand is a proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America — the party whose platform calls for abolishing capitalism and transferring ownership of the economy to workers and communities. She'd also like you to know she deserves $32 an hour as a "livable wage" in NYC.
Farahmand lasted exactly one month as an unpaid intern in New York City Council Member Harvey Epstein's office before she was shown the door. Her internship started May 19. By mid-June, she was gone. Her stated reason: she had organized 31 fellow interns to petition City Council Speaker Julie Menin for a dedicated intern fund guaranteeing $32 per hour plus full health insurance for every Council intern. The office told her not to come back. She called it retaliation and filed a lawsuit against the City of New York.
The demand: $32 an hour. More than double New York's minimum wage. For an internship that was, by posting, by interview, and by mutual agreement, unpaid.
At a June 28 rally at City Hall Park, Farahmand told the crowd that fellow interns "have been unable to eat lunch" and have bank accounts "hitting zero." She marched to 250 Broadway. The Association of Legislative Employees issued a solidarity statement. Jessica Distelhorst, a Columbia University graduate student, co-leads the broader "Payments for Placements" movement backing her cause.
Compelling imagery — somewhat undercut by the fact that Farahmand grew up the daughter of a prominent surgeon in a six-bedroom home.
Considerably more undercut by the fact that she knowingly applied to an unpaid position, accepted unpaid terms at her interview, and showed up on May 19 under those exact terms. Four weeks later she demanded a complete renegotiation. When the office declined, she filed a lawsuit alleging wage theft.
Wage theft. From a job that never promised wages.
Here's what no one in the coverage has touched: $32 an hour with full benefits is a capitalist demand. It assumes a wage labor market, individual compensation, and employer-provided healthcare — the precise framework the DSA's platform exists to dismantle. A genuine socialist would be organizing for collective ownership of the City Council intern program, not a higher rate on the same individual labor contract. Farahmand isn't rejecting capitalism. She's demanding it pay her better. That's not socialism. That's the welfare state wearing a DSA hoodie.
This isn't happening in a vacuum. Zohran Mamdani — also a DSA member — just won the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, running on rent control, free buses, and publicly owned housing. DSA has spent years methodically building political infrastructure inside New York City institutions. Farahmand's activist arc fits the playbook exactly: place a member inside a government office, manufacture a grievance, generate press coverage, hold a rally, file a lawsuit. The goal was never $32 an hour. The goal is the story.
Epstein — who chairs the Committee on Consumer and Worker Protection, which is almost too perfect — issued a statement claiming the termination was "fully unrelated to organizing" and was "performance-related." The city budget adopted the same week made no provision for council intern pay. The Council found the petition unpersuasive.
A Democratic Socialist demanding market-rate wages from a job she voluntarily took for free. A surgeon's daughter suing New York City for wage theft. An NYU public policy grad filing legal claims over terms she agreed to in writing.
That's not activism. That's a grad school application essay that got out of hand — and a party that's getting very good at turning those into political campaigns.