Amid a turbulent political landscape defined by increasing federal power, rising costs and technological might, Democrats must practice “good neighborism,” said New York’s 10th Congressional District candidate Brad Lander at a Thursday event hosted by Brown Democrats.
At the talk, Brown Democrats presented Lander, a former New York City comptroller and city councilor, with the John F. Kennedy Jr. ’83 Award for Inspiring Youth in Public Service. During the event, Lander called for “good neighborism” in politics.
Lander rose to prominence during the city’s 2025 Democratic primary for mayor — a race in which he and now-NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani cross-endorsed one another.
In an interview with The Herald following the talk, Lander discussed the state of progressive politics in America and his congressional campaign.
In Lander’s first advertisement for his campaign in December 2025 — which was themed around the PBS television program “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” — he said that “democracy is just neighbors working together.”
During the Thursday talk, Lander spoke about the “politics of good neighborism,” which he told The Herald “is under enormous assault, primarily from Donald Trump and rapidly advancing fascism.”
The White House did not respond to The Herald’s comment request.
Lander said that he witnessed good neighborism while visiting Minneapolis after Alex Pretti and Renee Good were killed by federal agents earlier this year.
“The people of Minneapolis, who experienced their federal government coming in, occupying their neighborhoods and deporting their neighbors,” came together in defense of their community by forming neighborhood watch patrols for federal agents and participating in other protest actions, Lander said in the interview with The Herald.
“The way they showed up, to me, is grounded in that kind of love of neighbors,” he added.
Lander’s trip to Minneapolis was not his first experience with federal agents. In June 2025, federal agents arrested him inside a courthouse as he was trying to escort an immigrant out of the building. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson wrote in a statement sent to The Herald that Lander was arrested “as a result of the chaos” he caused.
In a statement sent to The Herald, the DHS spokesperson defended the Minneapolis operation and wrote that “Brad Lander’s obsession with attacking the brave men and women of law enforcement, physically and rhetorically, must stop NOW.”
Civil disobedience is a “powerful tradition,” Lander told The Herald, applauding students who have participated in similar escort and watch programs near Providence courthouses.
For Lander, another aspect of good neighborism is affordability. During the event, he spoke about his support for rent control, which residents have advocated for in both New York City and Providence. Before running for the New York City Council in 2009, Lander’s background was in housing and urban development.
“It’s hard to be a good neighbor if you’re worried you can’t stay in your home,” he said in his interview with The Herald.
“Let’s name what’s rigged about this system and the politics about it while we are also trying doggedly to ground it in a love of neighbors,” Lander said.
Lander has called on his main opponent, Democratic incumbent U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y. 10), to join him in signing the “People’s Pledge.” The pledge mandates candidates to donate half of what political action committees spend on advertising for their respective campaigns to charity. Goldman did not agree to sign the pledge.
“Outside spending and super PACs are really catastrophically bad for politics,” Lander told The Herald, adding that representative government is “utterly corrupted when the politics are overwhelmed by dollars.”
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee PAC has been a source of friction in the Democratic Party as of late, with many progressives denouncing its political influence.
When asked about AIPAC, Lander told The Herald that “AIPAC is not unique here. There’s crypto PACs and AI PACs and Wall Street PACs, and all kinds of dark money.”
He added that AIPAC is a large “political backer of unconditional U.S. support for Israel while (Benjamin) Netanyahu is lighting the Middle East on fire.” AIPAC did not respond to a request for comment.
At Thursday’s event, he said Israel had committed genocide in Gaza — “even though I still have hope for some vision of a Jewish and democratic Israel,” he said — later telling The Herald that Israel’s actions “are catastrophically bad for Palestinians and Israelis and Americans and human beings on planet Earth.”
A spokesperson for Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, declined to comment on the allegations.
In the Herald interview, Lander also warned against a “set of tech advances that are pulling us away from the things that make us human,” including artificial intelligence, algorithmic social media and online sports gambling, which are “just not good forces for being good neighbors.”
He noted during the event that rapid market growth for artificial intelligence has outpaced government regulation of the industry. He proposed that the United States create a national lab which could “create government capacity to deploy and regulate” AI, he said.
Calliope Speredakos ’26, who attended the event, said that Lander’s message of neighborliness resonated with her. “Oftentimes, politicians or politics sort of operate behind this veil, and he very much broke through that,” she said. “It was really refreshing to hear him.”
The event’s moderator, Brown Democrats President Sylvie Watts ’26, said that she was already a fan of Lander prior to meeting him.
“His answers and how he just seemed to care about politics really matched what I had liked about him on paper,” Watts said. “I think his actions have really proven the ‘love-thy-neighbor principle’ he was talking about.”
James Libresco is a senior staff writer covering staff & student labor. He is a first-year student from Alexandria, Va. studying political science and contemplative studies. In his free time, he can be found playing basketball, meditating, or losing in Among Us.
