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NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams demanded his agencies cut their budgets upon taking office. Now New York City’s progressive movement is organizing in opposition. “The People’s Plan” — an alliance that recently launched in response to the executive budget — critiques the policies of a mayor who defeated several of the progressive movement’s preferred candidates in last year’s Democratic primary.

NEW YORK — Mayor Eric Adams had just finished announcing the launch of a controversial police unit dedicated to rooting out illegal handguns and was headed to City Hall as more than 100 politicians and activists gathered outside the Tweed Courthouse, around the corner from his office. The demonstrators — united under a new left-leaning alliance called “The People’s Plan” that has been several years in the making — were opposing as reductive and dangerous the very initiative Adams considers a necessary step in curbing the rise in violence across New York City. Instead, they called on him to invest more money in an array of municipal services.

Dozens of City Council members and advocates pushed back hard against Mayor Adams’ budget plan Wednesday, arguing that cuts he’s proposing to housing and education would hurt New Yorkers still struggling with the pandemic’s fallout. To fight cuts like those, 10 Council members and dozens of community leaders signed on to what they described as the “People’s Response” to the budget. Included among them are Council members De La Rosa (D-Washington Heights), Shekar Krishnan (D-Jackson Heights), Crystal Hudson (D-Prospect Heights) and Tiffany Caban (D-Astoria) among others. Along with the advocates who signed on to the statement, the group is calling itself the People’s Plan.

Now in the run-up to New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ first budget, the city’s progressive movement is trying to reclaim “defund” – in some cases, turning it against the mayor saying that he is the one trying to “defund” public safety. On Wednesday, hundreds of members of the city’s progressive movement heard from City Council Member Tiffany Cabán at a rally organized by The People’s Plan NYC criticizing Adams’ “austerity budget.”

Queens Council Members Shekar Krishnan and Nantasha Williams along with Brooklyn-Queens Council Member Jennifer Gutiérrez have signed on. Several Queens groups have also endorsed the The People’s Response, including Jackson Heights People for Public Schools, Make the Road New York and Woodside on the Move. The signees are critical of the mayor’s budget saying that it cuts funding for vital services that vulnerable New Yorkers need, all while maintaining or increasing funds for institutions that criminalize and destabilize communities of color, like the NYPD and the jails system.

Dozens of City Council members and advocates pushed back hard against Mayor Adams’ budget plan Wednesday, arguing that cuts he’s proposing to housing and education would hurt New Yorkers still struggling with the pandemic’s fallout.