our Platform

We live in the wealthiest city in the world, but the working families in our district are being squeezed by skyrocketing rents, rising utility bills, and impossible childcare costs. While working people in AD-38 struggle, the wealthiest people and corporations among us are making more than ever

Voters in AD-38 demanded that we tax the rich by voting overwhelmingly for Zohran last fall, and Zohran has taken major strides by taxing the second homes of the richest of the rich. But there’s only so much he can do without more allies in the state assembly – and that’s why David is running. David will join the other Socialists in Office to expand taxes on the richest New Yorkers to fund the services working people need to thrive. 

David will make energy more affordable by passing the NY HEAT Act to end subsidies for fossil fuel expansion and lower utility caps for low-income households. He’ll fight to freeze electric and gas rates, ban utility shutoffs during the summer, and expand reimbursements during blackouts.

To make housing more affordable, David will fully fund NYCHA, expand the Housing Access Voucher Program, and advance the Social Housing Development Authority Act and Jobs and Housing Act to build permanently affordable, union-built, tenant-governed housing while creating good jobs. Finally, David will strengthen Good Cause Eviction protections statewide.

To freeze transit fares, expand the Free Bus pilot program, and make transit more fast and reliable, David will fight for the Fix the MTA package. Finally, David will champion the Universal Child Care Act to provide free, high-quality care for all New Yorkers, and fight for a New Deal for CUNY to restore tuition-free, well-funded higher education.

More than half of all residents in AD-38 are immigrants, but our representatives have not done nearly enough to protect them from exploitative working conditions, Trump’s mass deportation machine, and their unfair exclusion from the tax-funded social programs they pay into. As an immigrant workers’ rights attorney, David has fought to ensure that every New Yorker, regardless of immigration status, can live with dignity and without fear. David will bring this fight – and his track record of winning it – with him to the State Assembly.

In AD-38, the fear of ICE raids and unlawful detention is a daily reality. It isn’t just ICE – David has seen firsthand that businesses and corporations use the threat of immigration enforcement to steal wages, violate labor laws, and silence those who speak up.

David will be a champion for immigrant justice in Albany, as he has been for his entire professional life. He will fight to pass the New York for All Act in its entirety – including provisions to ban informal cooperation between local law enforcement and ICE – and the Dignity Not Detention Act to stop the funneling of our neighbors into detention centers. He will work to guarantee a right to counsel through the Access to Representation Act, and ensure all workers have a lifeline through the Unemployment Bridge Program and Coverage for All. David will fight for a New York where every person – regardless of immigration status – has the safety, healthcare, and rights they deserve.

Working people in AD-38 have been neglected by the politicians elected to serve us. Taxi drivers working six days a week cannot afford rent. Line cooks deal with management stealing tips and demanding off-the-clock labor. Delivery workers don’t get real, human support when they face a dangerous situation on the job or have their account unfairly deleted; instead, they deal with a useless chatbot in an app. State workers are forced to pay more money into pensions than they can ever hope to receive in retirement.

The people in our district work hard, and it’s past time for that work to be rewarded with living wages, safe working conditions, and a secure future. David Orkin has dedicated his life to fighting for workers. As an immigrant workers’ rights attorney, he has won back hundreds of thousands of dollars in stolen wages for working families in AD-38. As a union organizer, he has secured wage increases and dignity for his coworkers and himself.

In Albany, David will pass the EmPIRE Worker Protection Act so that workers and labor unions can directly recover unpaid wages from employers, instead of having to rely on the understaffed and over-capacity Department of Labor. He’ll fight to raise the minimum wage to $30 by 2030, and will fight for gig and app-based workers by establishing an hourly minimum wage and better labor protections, like anti-retaliation and just cause termination. To make sure public sector workers get a fair retirement, he’ll fully fix Tier 6 for the people who keep our city running.

Finally, David will create quality, well-paying jobs for the residents of AD-38. David will fight to build the QueensLink, support a green energy transition for New York City, and revitalize Atlantic Avenue and Jamaica Avenue – and he’ll work with the state and city’s economic development agencies to make sure developers are incentivized to hire workers who live in AD-38.

Climate change is a crisis for both the planet and affordability. As weather gets more extreme, it’s more expensive than ever to keep our homes cool in the summer and warm in the winter. Our neighbors are falling behind on their energy bills, and 1 in 5 households have experienced a utility shutoff. Despite this, New York state keeps letting utility companies raise their rates – and Governor Hochul is rolling back significant parts of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), ensuring that climate change will keep getting worse.

The New York state government allows polluting utility companies to get even richer at our expense: ConEd pockets 12% of our electric bills as pure profit. New York cannot continue burning expensive fossil fuels and placing the costs on working people. The clean energy transition will create good, family-sustaining jobs for New Yorkers, bring our household costs for energy down, and protect us from the worst of climate change.

In the State Assembly, David Orkin will take immediate steps to make energy more affordable by working to freeze electric and gas rates, banning utility shutoffs during the summer, and expanding reimbursement requirements during blackouts. He’ll fight climate change by restoring the full CLCPA and implementing the Build Public Renewables Act to build more publicly owned, nonprofit, renewable energy sources using union labor, and fund upgrades to make our schools both healthier and greener. In the long term, he’ll work to have the state take over ConEd and transform it into a public utility that serves the people, not corporate profit.

We all rely on technology. But without the right laws in place, tech can hurt working people while benefiting the billionaires, landlords, corporations, and federal agencies that use tech to surveil and exploit us. In Albany, David will fight to ensure technology serves working people, not billionaires or the surveillance state. 

David will fight to close the digital divide by securing ConnectAll grants for AD-38, which will fund affordable broadband infrastructure, digital literacy resources, and access to devices.

Many residents of AD-38 work as drivers for Uber, Lyft, Doordash, and Amazon. David will fight to secure living wages, safety standards, and union rights for these workers by preventing employers from misclassifying employees as independent contractors, requiring last-mile operators like Amazon to directly employ staff, and introducing statewide just cause deactivation laws to end wrongful automated terminations and ban discriminatory algorithms from setting wages.

To protect our privacy and wallets, David will support the Ban the Scan slate to prohibit biometric surveillance by police, landlords, and schools. He will back a moratorium on new data centers to protect working communities from rising electricity costs and worsening pollution. 

Finally, he will work to ban surveillance pricing, which uses personal data to charge consumers as much as possible for daily essentials like groceries, and close loopholes in the Digital Fair Repair Act to give New Yorkers the right to fix the devices they own.