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 work to enforce the recently passed Dignity Not Detention Act to stop the funneling of our neighbors into detention centers. He will work to reduce the threat of employer retaliation through the EmPIRE Worker Protection Act and guarantee a right to counsel through the Access to Representation Act. Finally, David will fight for all immigrants to have quality health insurance through 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.

Healthcare is a human right. In the wealthiest city in the world, no one should ever be forced to choose between paying for life saving medical care, or paying for rent or groceries. Nurses, home care workers, and others who provide essential care to New Yorkers – many of whom are women of color – must be paid and protected to guarantee high quality and stable jobs in the healthcare industry. David knows that patients and caretakers are suffering under the same broken system that both denies care and exploits workers so the rich can get richer. 

In Albany, David will fight for a healthcare agenda that works for care workers and patients alike, putting the needs of the many over profit for the few. He’ll join the fight for the New York Health Act to create universal healthcare for all New Yorkers statewide, and pass Coverage for All to ensure all low-income New Yorkers, regardless of immigration status, can access coverage in the meantime. He’ll champion the Fair Pay for Home Care Act and support legislation to fully fund the transition from 24-hour shifts to split shifts so that care workers have better working conditions and care recipients can access the care they need. By repealing the Global Medicaid Cap, we can ensure quality care for all New Yorkers with a fully funded healthcare system. 

The costs of medical care don’t end at the doctor’s office, though. David will also fight to lower the cost of prescription medicine and end insulin co-pays.

Housing in AD-38 has never been more expensive. Wages are stagnant but rent continues to climb, forcing lifelong residents to leave the neighborhoods they helped build. Families are doubling and tripling up in apartments to afford rent. At the same time, local homeowners and small landlords are paying a higher effective property tax rate than wealthy owners in Manhattan. The people who call AD-38 home deserve stable, permanently affordable housing. 

David knows that housing is a human right. In Albany, he will fight to expand Good Cause Eviction, closing the loopholes that leave millions of tenants unprotected. To protect tenants from predatory landlords, David will pass the New York State Right to Counsel Act so no tenant faces housing court alone. To prevent homelessness before it starts, David supports the Housing Access Voucher Program to ensure at-risk New Yorkers can simply afford to pay their rent.

True affordability requires treating housing as a public good. David supports the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act to give tenants the first right to buy their buildings when they go up for sale, and the creation of the Social Housing Development Authority to build and finance permanently affordable, democratically controlled housing right here in Queens. He will fight for comprehensive property tax reform that makes sure the richest New Yorkers pay their fair share, ending the tax penalty on AD-38 homeowners. Finally, David is committed to fighting alongside our neighbors across the city to fully fund NYCHA, preserving New York’s largest source of affordable housing.

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.

AD-38 has a public transit problem. Most people in the district own at least one car – often not because they want to, but because the public transit options near their homes aren’t good enough. Gas is only getting more expensive, and reliance on cars makes our climate crisis worse. In New York City, everyone who wants to take public transit should be able to. 

In Albany, David will use his vote on the state budget to force the MTA to give AD-38 residents better, faster, more reliable transit options. He’ll fight to pass the Fix the MTA Act to freeze fares, expand the Free Bus pilot program, and use his bully pulpit to fight for 5-minute rush-hour headways on the M and J trains, the same standard riders on the L train already enjoy. 

Through the MTA Capital Plan, he will fight to build the QueensLink, keep the Interborough Express (IBX) on schedule, and restore the abandoned Woodhaven Junction LIRR station so South Queens finally has the fast, reliable rail access it deserves. He will also fight to lower in-city LIRR tickets to the standard $3 subway fare – complete with free transfers – so working families aren't priced out of the fastest trains in their own borough.

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.

It should not feel dangerous to take a walk in your own neighborhood, but in just the last 12 months, 82 pedestrians in AD-38 have been injured by traffic violence, and one of our neighbors was killed. These are preventable tragedies. Our roads are also dangerous for drivers and bicyclists, and in a district where many residents work as delivery or taxi drivers, street safety also means worker safety. David will dedicate his street safety efforts to ensure that the large, unsafe streets that currently serve as high speed pass-throughs are designed to prioritize the people who live in our neighborhoods.

Again and again, local leaders have chosen driver convenience over pedestrian safety, blocking life-saving street redesigns on corridors like Woodhaven Boulevard and Atlantic Avenue to preserve a handful of parking spaces. Today, our opponent continues that legacy, centering her "street safety" agenda on licensing mopeds and increasing NYPD enforcement, rather than fighting for the physical street infrastructure that actually stops cars from hitting people. 

David will lead the fight to create a comprehensive AD-38 Street Safety Plan, giving the city and the DOT a clear mandate to transform our most dangerous streets, like Woodhaven Blvd, Atlantic Ave, Jamaica Ave and Myrtle Ave. He will advocate for design solutions that force cars to drive safely, including protected bike and bus lanes, curb extensions, speed bumps, traffic lights, and hardened daylighting at the most dangerous corners. Streets that are safe for pedestrians and cyclists are safer for drivers, too!

In AD-38 and across the country, the Trump administration is attacking our bodily autonomy. The government has no place interfering with our medical decisions, from patients seeking abortions to those seeking gender-affirming care. 

New York made history by enshrining reproductive freedom in the state constitution, but a legal right means nothing if you can't afford the travel, the time off work, or the procedure itself. 

In Albany, David will fight to ensure New York goes beyond being a "safe state" and becomes a fully funded sanctuary for all. He will champion expanding the Reproductive Freedom and Equity Grant Program to cover practical support like travel and childcare for those seeking abortions, and advance the New York State Abortion Clinical Training Program Act to build a robust pipeline of trained providers across the state.

Protecting access to care also means protecting patients from Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs), which frequently use misleading ads to prey on vulnerable people seeking reproductive healthcare. David will co-sponsor legislation like Assembly Bill A01547, which requires search engines and social media platforms to clearly flag CPC ads and listings. He will also champion Assembly Bill A4338 to empower the Department of Health to investigate complaints and fine fake clinics that fail to disclose their lack of licensed medical professionals. Beyond legislation, David will push for state funding for localized public education campaigns so patients can easily distinguish between legitimate medical practices and fake clinics pushing an anti-choice agenda.

Reproductive rights extend beyond the freedom to choose. David will also fight for expectant parents by expanding pre- and post-natal care and access to doulas and lactation consulting.  

That same commitment extends to trans and gender-nonconforming New Yorkers, who face relentless federal attacks on their right to exist and receive care. David will fight to pass the Gender-Affirming Care Access Program to directly fund lifesaving treatment, and support legislation requiring New York Medicaid to fully cover gender-affirming procedures — regardless of federal funding cuts.

Because both fights depend on privacy, David will push to pass the New York Health Information Privacy Act (NYHIPA) to stop tech companies and data brokers from weaponizing personal data against anyone seeking reproductive or gender-affirming healthcare.

For years, the growing privatization of NY schools has not met the needs of students, families or teachers, and deepened inequality across the city and here in AD-38. Public schools are starved of the resources they need to deliver the best student outcomes, while the wealthiest families can buy their way ahead. David believes that high-quality, fully funded public education should be guaranteed to every New Yorker, from pre-K to college graduation.

In Albany, David will fight to End Charter School Expansion and demand that the state prioritize funding for our public schools over private charters. While charters claim to offer "choice” for all families, they frequently use rigid administrative hurdles – like time-consuming application processes and mandatory parent volunteer hours – to functionally discriminate against working families who lack flexible schedules. Our public tax dollars belong in public classrooms that serve all students, not in the hands of private operators who can choose which students to leave behind. David is also committed to fully Fixing Tier 6 so that public schools can retain the best teachers by investing in their retirement and benefits.

David is fully committed to passing the New Deal for CUNY to restore tuition-free, high-quality higher education at our city’s public universities. He will also champion the fight to Make SUNY Free, guaranteeing that every resident of New York State has a clear, debt-free path to a college degree.

Finally, David knows that learning begins long before kindergarten – and that skyrocketing costs are forcing parents in AD-38 to choose between paying for childcare and paying their bills. David will fight to pass Universal Childcare across New York State, ensuring every family has access to safe, enriching early education while providing massive financial relief to working parents.Item description

New York has long been a sanctuary for LGBTQ+ people across the country and around the world, a place where queer people come to find safety, community, and the freedom to live openly. But that safety is under threat. The Trump administration is weaponizing the existence of queer people, especially the trans community, as a wedge issue to fracture working class solidarity and roll back hard-won civil liberties. This hateful rhetoric is causing violence: 1 in 5 hate crimes tracked by the FBI in 2023 were committed against queer people. New York must remain an unapologetic sanctuary. As an out queer man and an immigrant workers’ rights attorney who has spent a decade fighting for marginalized people, David knows we must do more than play defense.

David will fight alongside the trans community to increase state budget funding for the Lorena Borjas Transgender Wellness and Equity Fund, ensuring direct investment in youth development, job training, and gender-affirming care. He will fiercely advocate for the Gender Identity Respect, Dignity and Safety (GIRDS) Act to guarantee that incarcerated trans, non-binary, intersex, and gender-nonconforming New Yorkers are housed safely according to their gender identity, protected from solitary confinement, and guaranteed access to care. David will fight to pass Cecilia's Law to fully decriminalize sex work, and will vote to pass legislation to end the criminalization of condoms, in order to prevent prosecutors from using condom possession as evidence of sex work.

As right-wing factions attempt to erase queer existence from public life, David will push to pass the Freedom to Read Act to protect our libraries from bigoted book bans, champion mandatory Comprehensive Sex Education in all public schools, and support the Privacy Amendment to ensure New York's constitution fully protects LGBTQ+ rights.