In January 2021, workers at the Hunts Point Produce Market in the Bronx walked off the job for a one-dollar raise. Some pro-labor politicians like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez flocked to the picket line. But Mayor Bill de Blasio stayed home. The awkward truth was that Hunts Point sits on land owned by New York City and managed by the city’s Economic Development Corporation (EDC). In 2013, the EDC handed the market’s owners an 11 percent rent reduction when they threatened to move the market to New Jersey. The EDC included no protection for workers in this deal — it simply handed over public land and public money and stood by while unionized workers fought alone.

At the time, Avi Garelick and Andrew Schustek argued in Jacobin that the Left’s response to the EDC should be straightforward: abolish it and subordinate its functions to direct democratic control. Abolition is the path Boston Mayor Michelle Wu took when she reformed her city’s equivalent agency, the Boston Planning and Development Agency.

We propose a different approach. The EDC shouldn’t be abolished — it should be at the heart of an ambitious rethinking of what government can do, how the city can deliver public services to its citizens, and how a democratic socialist can manage the economy.