Lena Afridi, who makes $185,000 a year at City Hall, is also an editor at Pinko magazine, 'a collective for thinking gay communism'
New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani named a self-proclaimed "gay communist" who has called for abolishing the police and "undoing capitalism" to a top post in his administration, the Washington Free Beacon can reveal.
Lena Afridi--who uses "they/them pronouns"--deleted much of her social media history shortly before arriving at City Hall, but the Free Beacon recovered her postings. She was quietly named to a senior adviser position in the mayor's office in April 2026, drawing a hefty salary of $185,000 a year, records show.
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Multiple people in the Mamdani administration who knew Afridi told the Free Beacon they could not say what she did day to day, with one calling her a "strange person." Her portfolio appears to include supporting the city's opposition to ICE and other federal efforts to rein in so-called sanctuary cities.
Before joining the administration, Afridi spent three years working as chief of staff for PowerSwitch Action, a nonprofit organization dedicated to "forging multiracial feminist democracy" and "grounded in breaking the interlocking chains of oppression."
The group openly bragged about their involvement in violent anti-ICE riots in Minnesota in a March 2026 blog post.
In addition to her government and advocacy work, Afridi is currently listed as an editor at Pinko, a magazine which describes itself as "a collective for thinking gay communism." On the masthead, she went by "L. Israh Afridi." Israh is an Arabic word for "night journey" that is sacred in Islam.
Earlier website iterations of Pinko touted the magazine as "communism for fags."
"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," Pinko clarified in a 2019 blog post.
On X, Afridi posted multiple times about her support for "communism" and "gay communism."
Like many Mamdani staffers, Afridi quietly deleted her X account, @lpafridi, in the days leading up to her appointment--but in old posts uncovered by the Free Beacon, she offered a militant and uncompromising far-left agenda.
"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," she declared in June 2020.
Afridi has not been shy about leaning into her communist bona fides, posting in September 2021 that "undoing capitalism" was the only way to stop climate change.
Afridi is a close friend of Cea Weaver, the notorious top Mamdani housing official who's called home ownership "a weapon of white supremacy" and expressed a desire to "impoverish the white middle class."
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