Fired Intern Leads Rally Against Unpaid Interns at City Council

Dozens gathered at City Hall Park on June 28 to protest unpaid internship conditions at the New York City Council, demanding legislators expand the pay program.

The demonstration was sparked by the termination of Mina Farahmand, a former council intern working in the office of Harvey Epstein. Farahmand stated that Epstein’s staff fired her the day after she and 31 fellow interns developed a petition demanding an end to unpaid internships.

”How dare they, in this so-called workers’ rights capital of the world, fire me for organizing for pay as an unpaid intern,” Farahmand said to the rally goers.

The event aimed to pressure City Council Speaker Julie Menin to expand the Council’s existing $32-per-hour intern pay program to cover all interns citywide. Protesters condemned the firing of Farahmand as well as union busting.

Demonstrators stood unified behind Farahmand holding various signs that read “Interns For Pay,” and “Interns for an Affordable Future.”

The rally comes amid a brutal job market for recent graduates. According to data collected by Indexbox, internship postings declined last year compared to each of the five preceding years, while the average number of applications per internship nearly doubled in 2025. This makes unpaid positions an even steeper ask for working class students who cannot afford to absorb the cost of free labor in a city already undergoing affordability concerns.

Eric Anicich, an assistant professor of management at University of Southern California told USC’s Annenberg Media about the realities of unpaid work. “It’s hard to look two or three steps down the road of your professional career and say, ‘I can do this unpaid internship, because I know that a year from now, maybe it will open a door for me,’” he said. “A lot of people don’t have the luxury to think in that long-term orientation.”

Jessica Distelhorst, 36, a Columbia University graduate student and co-leader of the Payments for Placements movement told the crowd about her personal encounter with near homelessness and a hospitalization while attempting to make ends meet as an intern.

“Working class students should not have to risk homelessness or physical collapse just to be able to serve the people of this city,” she said. “We are told that public service requires sacrifice, but where is the limit between sacrifice and exploitation?”.

”This is not an individual office issue,” Distelhorst said. “This is a structural funding issue that a reallocation of the speaker’s central budget could solve.”

Former intern, Ashley Cerda, 21, described repeatedly skipping meals throughout her year-long unpaid placement at a Council district office.

“I couldn’t afford to eat,” Cerda said, solemnly.

The demonstration also drew attention to what organizers called a political contradiction at its core. Epstein, whose office employed Farahmand without pay before terminating her, chairs the Council’s Committee on Consumer and Worker Protection. Epstein denied the firing was connected to her organizing, saying in a statement that his office “has had an explicit policy that interns are brought in for either pay or academic reasons,” and that the decision was “fully unrelated to organizing taking place and was instead performance related.”

“We always support the opportunity for people to organize and advocate for themselves. My staff made this decision and I stand behind them in their choice,” Epstein added.

A speaker representing the NYC Union of Students pushed back on what she said was the silence from progressive elected officials.

”Many of the same politicians who rightly fight for the labor rights of delivery workers, taxi drivers, and adjunct workers have gone quiet on this issue,” she said. “And this is not the way things have to be.”

After speeches concluded, attendees marched from City Hall Park to 250 Broadway, where most Council offices are located, chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, unpaid labor got to go.”

”No elected officials are here today,” Farahmand told the crowd before the march. “We invited dozens. The reason they’re not here is because they benefit from an unfair system in which they can use free labor to make their city run.”

Farahmand announced at the rally that she is filing a lawsuit against the City of New York, alleging retaliation for her organizing activity and wage theft. The claims have not been tested in court. Speaker Menin’s office told New York Post that they are “reviewing policies for internships within Council Member offices;” however the city’s budget, adopted Tuesday, made no provision for council intern pay.

”We make up approximately a fourth to a third of all city council workforce,” Farahmand said. “The city relies on our labor to keep running. And the vast majority of us are completely unpaid.”