New York’s Commission on Racial Equity went to court against the mayor’s own office and won. Its leader, Linda Tigani, is now on her way out.
In August, a court found that Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his predecessor, Eric Adams, broke the law by missing deadlines for the city’s first racial equity plan, as City & State reported. This fall Mamdani moved to replace Tigani, who has chaired the commission since 2023, with Christopher Alexander, executive director of the NAACP’s New York State Conference. On Oct. 28, dozens of advocates gathered outside City Hall to stop it. The Amsterdam News reported on the rally Friday.
The commission is the city’s only independent racial equity office, created by the City Charter to check the mayor’s plan rather than write it. In September it concluded that Mamdani’s final plan fell short of the charter’s requirements, citing the absence of overarching strategies, specific citywide measures of progress and updated maps.
Council Member Farah Louis told the rally: “Work like this depends on continuity. Changing leadership midstream risks losing institutional knowledge and the community’s trust.” Council Members Althea Stevens and Carmen De La Rosa also spoke, and the council’s Black, Latino and Asian Caucus wrote to the mayor opposing the change. Demonstrators chanted “Protect Linda” and “Racial equity is law, hands off CORE.”
Tigani put the stakes in terms of Black property. “Our Black homes and land are being stolen right from under us,” she said. “The Commission on Racial Equity is the only government agency supporting and funding ending deed theft in Black and Brown communities.” The commission is also at work on the city’s reparations study, which she says needs a leader who will defend the law. “It is the mayor’s job to uphold racial equity law,” she told the Amsterdam News. “It is not his job to appeal racial equity law.”
Minutes after the rally, Mamdani announced a retreat that was really a delay. “Alongside the City Council, we have agreed to extend her term to next summer, and we’re excited to work with the same council to put forward Christopher Alexander as the next commissioner,” he said. Tigani’s term now ends July 31, 2027, and Alexander would start Aug. 1, subject to approval by the mayor and Council Speaker Julie Menin. In a statement, Mamdani said the city owes Tigani “thanks for her work to advance racial equity across the five boroughs.”
A mayor’s office spokesperson, Jeremy Edwards, told the New York Times the mayor “strongly supports the commission’s work” on the city’s complicity in the history of slavery. Tigani had criticized Mamdani for keeping Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and for inviting President Trump to Gracie Mansion, calling the latter “deeply problematic.”
Alexander is a credible civil rights leader, and nothing in the record says he will go easy on City Hall. But a watchdog’s independence is tested at the moment she wins against the person who can replace her. Mamdani ran as the mayor who would repair what New York did to Black residents. The test of that is whether his next appointee is as willing to say when he has failed the law, and whether Black New Yorkers are asked before the Council votes.
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