The NYC Commission on Racial Equity (CORE) is the city’s fledgling independent racial equity office. Chair and Executive Director Linda Tigani was appointed a few months ago. The office was established thanks to the racial justice ballots voted through in the Nov. 2022 election.
“As an organizer you have to have a degree of imagination and commitment to a new possibility in your world, and the commission I think represents a pathway to a new world, an equitable city government,” said Tigani. “We have done a lot of work to normalize racial equity and the voters overwhelmingly said that they wanted this work when they voted for it on the ballot.”
Under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, the city formed the racial justice commission in 2021 to focus on reforming the city’s charter, which is the bedrock of the city’s constitution. They also conducted a series of public hearings over a nine-month period to ask residents about the barriers to racial equity and how best to remove them. By 2022, the commission put forth three ballot proposals based on their research and engagement with the public that established a racial equity office, added a “preamble” or statement of foundational values to the city charter, and made an amendment to the charter that tracks the “true cost of living” in New York City.
CORE is meant to be an independent 15-member commission that centers civilians with marginalized voices and assesses the city’s racial equity planning process. It essentially is an oversight and accountability entity for the new Mayor’s Office of Equity & Racial Justice (MOERJ), also the byproduct of a city task force formed under de Blasio in 2020 to study the impact of COVID-19 on communities of color. The MOERJ is mandated to incorporate CORE plans.
“You can’t have strategy without an equity lens, and you can’t advance equity in an institution without strategy,” said Tigani.
A native Brooklynite, Tigani’s background is Sudanese and Ethiopian. Her mother raised her and her brother. After schooling, Tigani became a social worker assisting homeless families. She spent about eight months living overseas in Ethiopia during that time. She said she got her sense of community activism from the Black immigrant experience.
“My mom’s migration story and her story of life in New York City and as a Black woman, a single head household, have helped me understand all of the interlocking systems and connections between how racism in America is connected to inequity all over the world,” said Tigani. “Her experience raising us here really helped me understand how complex oppression is and how it can come from multiple sources. You need a multi-campaign to push back and can’t just focus on one issue.”
Tigani was appointed by Mayor Eric Adams in Oct. 2023, and she was swiftly met with conservative backlash over old “controversial” social media posts from 2020 that had the phrase “from the river to the sea” in reference to Palestine. The quasi political party and terrorist organization that rules Palestine and its civilians known as Hamas had attacked Israel on Oct. 7, spiking racial tensions in the city and abroad. Groups even briefly called for her to be fired in the same manner that former President of Harvard University Claudine Gay was. Tigani did not comment on her social media about the attacks or Hamas and Palestine in 2023, but did put out statements later denouncing violence and accusations of antisemitism.
She has learned a valuable lesson about acknowledging “multiple truths” as well as incorporating “dignity and respect for every human being regardless of what they politically believe or who they support” into the mission of CORE. As chair, she said she’s committed to having all political voices, immigrant groups, and races and ethnicities in the city “at the table.” Once the commission is fully staffed and up and running, Tigani envisions putting forth policy proposals that center Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, LGBTQIA+ communities, the foster care system, and formerly incarcerated communities. She wants to build trust on all fronts and knows it will not be easy.
“I truly believe that by putting CORE into the city charter this way that voters did something new,” said Jimmy Pan, a former colleague of Tigani’s at Thrive NYC. “In this country we’re just beginning to think about how community members can have a meaningful voice at the center of government, not just at the margins. I hope people, having voted for it, really appreciate that opportunity to show up. Hold CORE accountable, hold the Mayor’s office accountable. This is a first step for them.”
Pan said that it’s important that CORE be properly prioritized by the Mayor and funded by the city as well.
Tigani was a policy leader with Thrive NYC addressing mental health on the ground, and then worked as the executive director for the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) ‘Race to Justice’ team under Torian Easterling, former first deputy commissioner and inaugural DOHMH chief equity officer. The team was an internal reform effort to help close racial health gaps in the city’s healthcare system initiated by former Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett back in 2014.
Easterling said that the team worked on equitably distributing vaccines in the city during the pandemic and eventually analyzed the hospital’s infrastructure as a part of the inception of the equity office model. He wholeheartedly threw his support behind Tigani in her new role as chairperson of CORE.
“She has always been a dedicated civil servant, and I count Linda among [those] who have sought to go into public service not just for a job but because she was clear eyed about the kind of change she could make as a civil servant,” said Easterling.
Amsterdam News reached out to MOERJ for comment but they couldn’t provide one by post time.
Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member and writes about politics for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.