A 21-year-old socialist and unpaid former NYC Council intern who claimed she was axed after demanding she and her peers get paid $32 an hour with full health benefits — and plans to sue the Council — was born into wealth.
Mina Farahmand — who willingly interned for free last year to help get fellow silver-spoon socialist Zohran Mamdani elected mayor – is the daughter of a prominent surgeon and grew up in a palatial six-bedroom, four-and-a-half-bathroom home on 30 acres in Colville, Wash.
Her father, Mehrdad Farahmand, is a general-surgery specialist at Providence, the largest health care provider in Washington State. Although his salary is not public, a current job posting for a general surgeon at Providence offers $457,269 to $555,423 in pay per year.
The elder Farahmand also owns a vacant five-and-a-half-acre lot about 10 miles away in nearby Kettle Falls, Wash., bringing his total property portfolio to nearly $1 million.
Mina Farahmand made national headlines last month after being fired from an unpaid post as a legislative intern for Councilman Harvey Epstein (D-Manhattan).
The recent New York University graduate and card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America claimed she was terminated as retaliation for spearheading a petition campaign demanding Council Speaker Julie Menin set up a fund to pay all Council interns “a living wage” of $32 hourly — nearly double NYC’s existing minimum wage of $17 an hour – plus health benefits.
Critics blasted the money move by the Gen Zer dripping with generational wealth.
“This is just another nepo-baby agitator who signed up for an unpaid internship, then demanded to be paid after the fact,” said former Councilman Robert Holden, a moderate Democrat, upon learning of Farahmand’s affluent upbringing.
“We don’t need activists looking to create controversy. We need people who understand that public service starts with honoring the commitment you made.”
Farahmand’s internship started May 19 and was supposed to run through July.
Epstein insisted to City & State last week that his former intern was not canned over her organizing efforts and that the decision was instead “performance related.”
Farahmand on Tuesday vowed that she and other interns who signed the petition would sue the Council after it approved a new city budget that didn’t include funds to meet their pay demands.
“NYC Council’s budget . . . confirms they believe Council interns deserve to be unpaid,” Farahmand said on X. “We’ve already told them how we’ve gone hungry. Now we’re suing them for wages.”
As of Friday, the Council had not been served with a lawsuit.
Although some Council interns are paid, others work strictly for college credit.
Menin, who declined to comment, has previously said she’s always paid her interns and that determining intern pay is up to each Council member.
Farahmand said, “We are suing the City of New York for wages because all interns deserve to be paid, and virtually all New York City Council unpaid internships, including mine, are illegal under the primary beneficiary test in the Fair Labor Standards Act.”
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