Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants to replace Linda Tigani, the head of New York City’s Racial Equity Commission. Supporters worry this move could delay important reparations work. Farah Louis said, "Changing leadership midstream risks losing institutional knowledge and the community's trust." Tigani previously sued the mayor over delays to a report.
After Mayor Zohran Mamdani sought to remove the head of New York City's Racial Equity Commission, some have raised questions about his commitment to reparations.
As word spread last summer that Mayor Zohran Mamdani wanted to replace the woman overseeing New York City's effort to address racial inequity, supporters of the group's work grew anxious.
The Commission on Racial Equity, or CORE, had already hired multiple researchers to study potential reparations for the descendants of slavery. By next summer, the group plans to release a final reparations study and the blueprint for a truth and reconciliation process.
Mr. Mamdani said his commitment to racial equity had not wavered despite his push to replace Linda Tigani, the commission's chairwoman, who has been an unusually vocal critic of the mayor's racial equity efforts.
But their split has led her supporters to question the mayor's commitment to their cause.
"Changing leadership midstream risks losing institutional knowledge and the community's trust," Farah Louis, a councilwoman from Brooklyn, said on Wednesday during a City Hall rally in support of Ms. Tigani. "It risks delaying and derailing a process that Black New Yorkers have waited generations to see."
Ms. Tigani, who came aboard under Mr. Mamdani's predecessor, Eric Adams, would seem like a natural ally of the mayor. She is an outspoken advocate for antiracism efforts; a City Hall veteran who worked under the current first deputy mayor, Dean Fuleihan; and a consistent supporter of the Palestinian cause. Her brother is the well-regarded commissioner of the New York City Department of Buildings.
But Ms. Tigani's no-filter approach could lead some to perceive her as being unnecessarily combative. In August, she won a lawsuit against the mayor's office for what she said were illegal delays to a mandated report on racial equity. She has also criticized Mr. Mamdani for retaining the police commissioner, Jessica S. Tisch, and suggested that the mayor was overly and improperly concerned about preserving a relationship with President Trump.