Mayor Mamdani on Thursday appointed Afua Atta-Mensah, who was a high official on his mayoral marketing campaign, to go the Mayor’s Workplace of Fairness and Racial Justice.
Atta-Mensah was the senior political director throughout Mamdani’s common election run. She led outreach efforts to Black voters, a demographic the then-candidate struggled to win over in the course of the major election.
Mamdani praised her as a “friend” and certainly one of his “most trusted advisers” at a Harlem press convention asserting the appointment.
“We will chart a new course from City Hall,” the mayor stated. “One where racial equity is pursued with seriousness and intent, where agencies and offices will work collaboratively and where deadlines will be met, as opposed to ignored.”
He additionally stated that the workplace beneath Atta-Mensah would launch a charter-mandated, lengthy overdue, citywide racial fairness plan by his administration’s hundred-day mark.
Arva Rice, president of the New York City League and former interim chairperson of the NYPD’s Civilian Grievance Evaluate Board, stated on the press convention that Atta-Mensah’s ascent to the function was a “signal that this administration is not just talking about fairness, it is building the infrastructure for success in implementation.”
Afua Atta-Mensah (at podium), govt director of Neighborhood Voices Heard, speaks to activists at a Metropolis Corridor rally protesting poor circumstances and mould at NYCHA buildings on Wednesday, Feb. 15, 2017. (Jefferson Siegel / New York Each day Information)
Atta-Mensah’s appointment comes because the Mamdani administration has confronted some criticism for not having a Black deputy mayor. Mamdani received the mayoral race regardless of his struggles to win over many older Black voters, who in the course of the marketing campaign expressed hesitation about his candidacy.
Requested if placing her within the function was a response to that criticism, Mamdani stated he was “proud of the team that we have assembled.”
“This appointment speaks to the excellence in Afua Atta-Mensah’s record and in her vision for what it can look like to fulfill not just the statutory requirements of this mayor’s office, but frankly, the need across the city to advance an agenda of racial equity and justice,” he continued.
Mamdani’s faculties chancellor, Kamar Samuels, is Black, as is his director of intergovernmental affairs, Jahmila Edwards.
The Workplace of Fairness and Racial Justice was created beneath ex-Mayor Adams in 2022. Atta-Mensah will change Sideya Sherman as chief fairness officer and commissioner of the workplace.
