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This week saw an epic snowstorm on the East Coast, and in New York City, an epic snowball battle royale in Washington Square Park immediately followed. This has long been a natural chain of events: Growing up in Newark, a snow day meant war. It might begin innocently enough, with a few kids at the park lobbing loose powder, the kind that bursts midair—but the laughter would stop once the first hard thump eventually landed. Then some older kid would decide that this was personal, and within minutes it was a full campaign of snowballs and tackle football in our park turned blank white. Somebody always got hit too hard. Somebody always went home crying. The next day that same kid walked into school with a black eye and a limp, but they were treated like a hero returned from battle.
Things haven’t changed much, except now everyone has cameras, and everything looks terrible on video. There’s also a difference in scale. When I was a kid, forty, maybe sixty kids, tops would show up for a fight. Now, all it takes is for a content page to drop a flyer and poof: a crowd that can swallow the park whole.
After nearly 20 inches of snow and a viral callout from Sidetalk—a hilarious New York-focused account with 4.4 million followers on TikTok and 1.8M on Instagram—thousands showed up to Washington Square Park for the battle. Watching the clip afterward, I felt real FOMO. It looked like the most fun anyone could have in a blizzard. There were no tickets or RSVP links, nothing was for sale. It was an internet meet up, a celebration of snowfall in a city where strangers could come together for some admittedly intense fun.
Then the police arrived, officers responding to 911 calls about a disorderly crowd. Video shows snowballs flying at them from multiple directions. Some appear to hit their heads and faces, and when the officers retreat toward their vehicles, parts of the crowd cheer. The NYPD says officers were struck with snow and ice and suffered injuries, and soon enough things escalated. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch called the behavior “disgraceful” and “criminal.” The Police Benevolent Association described it as assault, claiming “chunks of ice and rocks” were thrown. A 27-year-old man was arrested. Others are being sought.
In this situation, what was New York’s new famous mayor to do? Zohran Mamdani didn’t step into office with a neutral relationship to the police. He has argued for shrinking the role of the NYPD, using rhetoric that still echoes in headlines. Recently, he proposed changes to NYPD funding and the cancellation of a phased hiring plan for thousands of officers, moves unions have framed as proof he’s weakening the force.
So when they saw officers being pelted on video, some saw it as validation for their biggest fears.Then, instead of echoing the language of Commissioner Tisch, Mamdani described the incident as “a snowball fight that got out of hand,” and said he did not believe it warranted criminal charges based on what he saw. He urged New Yorkers to respect officers who had worked through the blizzard, and joked that if anyone should catch a snowball, it should be him. The cops were not in the mood—the Police Benevolent Association declared the mayor’s response a “complete failure of leadership.” And just like that, a snowball fight became a loyalty test.
Anyone who has been inside a crowd that size understands what the officers faced. You can’t “control” a spontaneous gathering of thousands of hyped-up people in a park during a blizzard. Sending cops into the mix, you risk altering the chemistry of the group. The intended spectacle of control becomes a reactive spectacle of defiance. There were reports of officers deploying chemical irritants as they retreated to their vehicles. The more you try and “contain” it with aggression, the more the crowd will try and rebel against you and respond with more aggression. These are known, common sense risks.
Mamdani was asked whether he planned to ban “crowd-sourced events” like this. He quipped that he would not ban “organized snowball fights.” When pressed on whether people should face charges, he declined to endorse the commissioner’s criminal framing, with the caveat that it was up to the police to investigate if anyone had broken the law. “I’ve said that what I saw was a snowball fight, it should be treated accordingly,” he said. “It was one that got out of hand, but that’s what it was.”
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Policing in New York has always been political. Which means mayors don’t just manage public safety, they also need to manage the performance of backing public safety. Consider 2019, when viral videos showed NYPD officers being doused with water in Brooklyn. Again, the police union erupted and commentators treated it as a collapse of civic order. Then, Mayor Bill de Blasio was quick to condemn the behavior and called it unacceptable. But that didn’t cool the dynamic. The unions still accused him of fostering disrespect. The incident became shorthand for a broader narrative about him being anti-police. Ultimately, it didn’t matter that de Blasio condemned it.
Which is why Mamdani’s approach stands out. He avoided language that would lock him into escalation, without also handwaving it like it was nothing. And more importantly, he didn’t inflate it into a referendum on the character of New Yorkers.
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I like to think that Mamdani will succeed because as New York’s first Muslim mayor, he’s intimately familiar with fielding the insinuations that lead to the inflation of suggested violence like at the snowball fight. He understands better than most how scenes involving brown people are perceived as inherently threatening. He knows how quickly joy can be reframed as menace. He also knows how to be comfortable in that space, and still find ways to humanize himself to an audience trying desperately to demonize him.
I’m not arguing that throwing ice at someone’s head is harmless. The question is whether every messy human moment requires a full symbolic crackdown. New York will face real crises that demand force. A snowball fight that spiraled in a blizzard isn’t one of them.
When I was a kid in Newark, someone always got hit too hard. Someone’s mother always held a grudge. There is still one mom who does not care for me because her son broke his arm playing football in the snow with me when we were 11 years old. But in the end we were fine. New York will be, too.
