The NYC Commission on Racial Equity (CORE) has wrapped its 30-day citywide community engagement and listening tour to gather public feedback about the Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s recently released racial equity plan, which aims to address long-standing disparities and systemic inequities across the city.
“The tours have been amazing. We’ve been working closely with community organizations to be able to put these on [and] they are excited to provide feedback on the mayor’s preliminary racial equity plan,” said CORE Chairperson Linda Tigani in an interview with the Amsterdam News. “The goal here is to make sure that we are able to give as much opportunity in as many different ways [for] the community to provide feedback, so the tours allow for individuals who may or may not be associated with an organization to come into the fold and make sure that their voice is heard.”
“Today is about organizing. Today is about thinking far, planning in the future of now,” said Councilmember Yusef Salaam at the CORE town hall in Harlem. “Take this word to those who are not in the room.”
The city’s racial equity plan, mandated under the New York City charter, is essentially a preliminary version of itself. The tours are designed to get feedback about what else Black and Latino New Yorkers would like to see in the plan.
Tigani said people wanted to know how much money in the city’s $127.4 billion budget will be going toward implementing the racial equity plan, which was just released by the mayor’s office on Tuesday of this week, and how it will be a framework for financial decisions in the future.
She said that various organizations have called for disaggregated data, a charter requirement for both the preliminary and final plans, which is essential for evaluating the city’s progress in achieving tangible improvements for communities affected by systemic racism and social injustice. This would be data broken down by characteristics and demographics, such as age, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, income, neighborhood, and race.
Above all, town hall attendees said they want to make sure the city addresses things like childcare, the cost of food, housing, and making much-needed repairs to New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) buildings. They also want those committing misconduct in the NYPD, federal ICE agents present in the city, the education department, and children’s services to be held accountable.
“We’ve heard, unsurprisingly, a lot about housing, in particular the ongoing request to ensure that repairs to NYCHA housing happen at a faster rate,” said Tigani. “We have heard a lot about family intervention and ensuring that family members have rights, and children remain safe in the system. We’ve heard a lot about the cost of living, and lastly, holding the NYPD accountable for harm they commit in communities … ensuring NYPD officers who have beaten, falsely arrested, and/or killed folks are held accountable. We’re clear that that is essential to moving forward. This work began because of an unprecedented uprising across the nation, and certainly here in New York City, after George Floyd.”
The ongoing lawsuit
In 2025, CORE filed a lawsuit against former Mayor Eric Adams and his administration for missing deadlines to release the city’s mandated racial equity plan back in January 2024. The litigation tried to legally compel his office to release the plan, but he refused. Tigani said the lawsuit is still technically ongoing under Mamdani’s office and not settled as of this week.
“We are still in court,” said Tigani. “The suit was against the city of New York to comply with the charter. Now that the preliminary plan has been released, that’s certainly great, but again, the goal of the plan and the process was to align with a budget cycle … we are working to make sure that all future cycles will comply with the dates in the charter so this work is seen and respected in the same way that putting out the city budget is respected, and that those dates are not changed without negotiation conversations. We are working to make sure that that continues.”
Tigani said CORE received “an initial judgment” and the city did file a motion to dismiss, which was denied by a judge.
Mamdani’s office said that they “cannot comment directly on ongoing litigation.”
“The Mamdani administration is committed to releasing the final Racial Equity Plan once the public comment period has closed and the feedback of New Yorkers has been incorporated into the final plan,” said a Mayor’s Press Office spokesperson in a statement. “Within its first 100 days, as pledged, the administration was proud to release a preliminary Racial Equity Plan after the previous administration ignored the legal deadline for publication. The administration is committed to building a more equitable New York that addresses the city’s history — and continuing legacy — of discriminatory policies and practices.”
CORE’s preliminary report, with collective feedback about the racial equity plan, was set to be released this week, the office said.