That Kale Caesar From Sweetgreen? That Cheap Chinese Takeout? You Didn’t Build That!

Not merely content to bury the banal bourgeois fantasy of homeownership, the administration moves on to the algorithmic marauders that squeeze profits from the dimly lit recesses of the modern service economy:

The Big Apple sued the food-delivery company Motoclick on Thursday in an escalation of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s crackdown on apps.

Motoclick stole directly from its own workers by charging them $10 fees for canceled orders and deducting refunded orders from their pay, the lawsuit filed by the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection alleged.

The app owes workers millions of dollars in stolen pay and damages, according to the city — which is looking to sue Motoclick out of existence.

[. . .]

The filing comes just days after Mamdani’s administration accused DoorDash and Uber Eats of preventing delivery workers from earning more than $550 million in tips.

The one-two punch against the delivery apps is part of Mamdani’s promised crackdown on “predatory” apps that he contends are stealing money from hard-working delivery workers.

[. . .]

Sam Levine, the department’s new commissioner, said “billion-dollar corporations” should be on notice.

“Uber and Doordash do not make their food, they don’t serve the food, they don’t ride the bikes, they don’t repair the bikes, they don’t deliver the food,” he said. “It’s time that we stand up for the people who actually make deliveries a core part of the city — that actually make our economy work, and that’s the working people of New York.”

And another day, another rhetorical tic for the mayor — this time Mamdani seems to be channeling Lin-Manuel Miranda with “telling stories of the city” and whatnot:

The new Hizzoner has pledged his Department of Consumer and Worker Protection will be more aggressive on behalf of New Yorkers, whether workers or customers.

“I want to be very clear: City Hall does not desire to have an adversarial relationship with any business operating in our city,” Mamdani said. “We cannot tell the story of the city without also telling the story of business.

“To those, however, who think they can make a profit while stealing from their workers, while breaking the law, make no mistake. We will have those workers’ backs each and every time.”

Each and every time!

But the best thing about foregrounding the working class struggle in the vanguard of the revolution is that race magically disappears — although The Times might call you out on that one — “None of Mamdani’s Deputy Mayors Are Black. It Has Become a Problem.”:

[A black female political consultant] wrote on Facebook that in this “new era” of city politics, a term Mr. Mamdani uses to describe his administration, Black women “no longer have a seat at the big table” where decisions are made.

“It is acting out what Black people don’t like about the D.S.A.,” [she] said of the Democratic Socialists of America, of which Mr. Mamdani is a member. “And that’s acting as if race doesn’t matter.”

[A] former head of the powerful union Local 32BJ, wrote on Facebook that the Mamdani administration was the first in decades to not appoint a Black deputy mayor. He also attributed the lack of diversity to the “D.S.A.-aligned politics” of the left, where issues of class are given more weight than race.

Marc H. Morial, the president of the National Urban League who became mayor of New Orleans when he was just two years older than Mr. Mamdani, who is 34, said in an interview that choosing a diverse administration was considered a “basic rule of being a mayor.”

“I don’t care whether the mayor’s Black, white, Asian or Latino,” he said, “you need a leadership team that mirrors the city.”