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.
“We saw Mamdani pushing back on Trump during the campaign, and also Trump’s appointees, like when the border czar came to Albany. But now we’re seeing Mamdani invite Trump to Gracie Mansion. I think it is deeply problematic to have a relationship with an administration that attacks key communities in New York City that are legally protected by our charter,” Ms. Tigani said in an interview.
For now, Ms. Tigani will stay put. The mayor and Julie Menin, the speaker of the City Council, have agreed to keep her in place through July when Christopher Alexander, executive director of the N.A.A.C.P. New York State Conference, will replace her.
Mr. Mamdani has not said why he sought to replace Ms. Tigani. But three people familiar with the matter said that her public, vocal and consistent criticism ultimately led the Mamdani administration to tell the Council that it did not believe she would be a good partner.
Jennifer Jones Austin, the head of the Civilian Complaint Review Board who, as chairwoman of the New York City Racial Justice Commission, helped to create CORE, said that the Mamdani administration and Ms. Tigani had a “difference in approach.”
“Even though CORE is an independent agency, I believe the Mamdani administration was looking for more of a cooperative engagement,” Ms. Jones Austin said, emphasizing that her experience with the administration shows that it wants to “make life better for all New Yorkers, with an understanding that there’s some who are more challenged than others.”
Others among the mayor’s Black allies, such as the Rev. Al Sharpton, head of the National Action Network, also said they were not worried about the mayor’s commitment to racial equity or reparations.
“He’s been there less than a year,” Mr. Sharpton said. “He has certainly told me, and he’s spoken at National Action Network two or three times, and he reiterates his commitment to racial equity.”
The administration allocated more money to the commission than ever before, allowing them to hire necessary staff. It eventually came to an agreement with Ms. Menin that allowed Ms. Tigani to stay on longer to assuage concerns about how a new chairwoman might disrupt the process, and according to two people familiar with the decision, will drop its appeal of the lawsuit that the commission won against the city.
A spokesman for the mayor said that he remained committed to the commission’s work. “The mayor has said we must be honest and accurate when it comes to our city’s complicity in the history of slavery, which is why he strongly supports the commission’s work to study reparations and looks forward to reviewing their findings this summer,” Jeremy Edwards, a spokesman for Mr. Mamdani, said in a statement. Mr. Alexander, he added, “is equally committed to carrying the commission’s work forward.”
In a statement announcing his appointment, Mr. Alexander said he would step into the role “with the deepest commitment to justice and equity” to ensure that “the city’s commitments become real changes in people’s lives.”
When he was running for mayor, Mr. Mamdani pledged to support the descendants of slavery in “repairing ongoing inequalities” and “rectifying historical discrimination.” After becoming mayor, Mr. Mamdani said that the city was “complicit” in slavery and that he supported the work of the commission to advance racial equity.
But in July, the mayor said that while he supported the idea of reparations he wanted to wait for the commission’s report before opining on possible remedies, such as monetary payments.
As the mayor has discovered with his pledges about police reform, education, arresting the Israeli prime minister — and now supporting reparations — promises made on the campaign trail can be difficult to fulfill in office.
Reparations advocates, faith leaders and City Council members have been examining Mr. Mamdani’s actions, such as removing mentions of diversity, equity and inclusion from the racial equity report, and accuse the mayor of being unduly influenced by Mr. Trump’s push to dismantle D.E.I. programs.
“The reparations work is going to require that the city stands strong on our racial equity law, that we uphold it, and that we defend it and he’s going to have to do that in his administration,” Ms. Tigani said in the interview.
Across the country and in New York, other reparations efforts have stalled or faced speed bumps. In New York, where Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a law creating a commission to study reparations in 2023, a report is not expected to be released until at least 2029, after the deadline was once again pushed back in last year’s budget.
Progress has also been slow in California, where Gov. Gavin Newsom created a task force to study reparations in 2020. After a report was released in 2023, bills to establish funds and an agency to distribute reparations failed to move forward the following year.
California has advanced some measures, such as issuing a formal apology for slavery in 2024. In October, Mr. Newsom signed a law requiring companies to disclose whether they or their predecessors had benefited from chattel slavery.
Even in places that have seen more progress, obstacles have arisen. In 2021, Evanston, Ill., became the first American city to make reparations available for the descendants of slavery, distributing at least $5 million in cash payments and housing grants.
But in June, the Trump administration joined a lawsuit challenging Evanston’s reparations program. Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general overseeing the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said the program amounted to “race discrimination, pure and simple” because payouts were based on “the color of their skin.”
The Trump administration’s involvement in the reparations battle is an argument for New York City to establish itself as a leader in the pursuit for racial equity, according to Ms. Tigani’s supporters, and an argument for why Mr. Mamdani shouldn’t violate CORE’s statutory independence.
“The commission is not positioned to be an extension of the mayor’s office,” said Keris Lové, the organizing strategist for New Yorkers for Reparations, a statewide coalition. “I think that she was doing exactly what her job called for and that’s what we will be expecting from the next appointee.”
Patrick Gaspard, an informal adviser to the mayor who serves as the chair of the city’s Commission on Government Efficiency, said that the concerns over Mr. Mamdani’s commitment to racial equity were unwarranted.
“If the mayor appointed a random person or somebody who had a history of hostility on issues of racial equity, then I would appreciate the questions that are being asked,” Mr. Gaspard said. “Chris Alexander is somebody with a demonstrated commitment to these issues.”
The post A Racial Equity Leader Clashed With Mamdani. Now She’s on the Way Out. appeared first on New York Times.
