Almost a year after New York City voters overwhelmingly approved ballot measures on racial justice matters last November, the city has finally announced who will lead those efforts.
Mayor Eric Adams this week named Sideya Sherman as head of the Mayor’s Office of Equity and Racial Justice, or MOERJ, and police reformer and city health official Linda Tigani as chair and executive director of the NYC Commission on Racial Equity, or CORE.
Both offices were established by voters when they approved the ballot proposals last year. While CORE is a newly created entity, city officials said MOERJ is an expanded form of the Mayor’s Office of Equity, which Sherman has led since 2022.
“We have made great strides in addressing inequities through policies and programs, but there is structural work we must undertake to repair the harms of the past and bring about lasting change,” Sherman said in a City Hall press release on the appointments Thursday.
Sherman has voiced support for several anti-racist bills pending in the City Council, including one that would require anti-racism training for city employees. At a recent Council hearing, he said any such training should apply to managers as well.
“We don't think anti-racism should only be for frontline workers,” he said.
Tigani most recently served as acting chief equity and strategy officer at the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. She has also spent years working with groups that advocated for police reforms.
On the website of Fearless Cities, which describes itself as a movement of activists, organizations and mayors “working to radicalize democracy” and “feminize politics,” Tigani is listed as a 2018 conference speaker who spoke on a panel entitled “Women and Communitary Responses to the Police State.”
Her biography on the site describes her as an “Ethiopian-Sudanese American born Social Worker, organizer, and researcher” committed to “ending police violence” through "Cop Watch, Know Your Rights workshops and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement."
“Linda is driven by her belief in the Palestinian right to return to their land and the self determination of all Black/African people to govern themselves and their land,” the bio states.
As a spokesperson for the group Communities United for Police Reform, she has made pointed critiques of police practices.
“The decrease in the overall number of stop-and-frisks being reported by the NYPD is inaccurate and presents a false picture of reality on the ground in communities,” Tigani said in 2018.
Last year, city voters endorsed three ballot questions on racial justice, with each receiving about 70% or more of the voters’ support.
Under the measures, New Yorkers gained a new city agency focused on racial equity and a city charter preamble calling on the city to target various racial disparities. The city now must also measure a new “true cost of living” metric annually.
