Regardless of shifting to the Bronx roughly two years in the past, Afua Atta-Mensah nonetheless feels very a lot at residence in Harlem, the place she just lately spoke with the AmNews. In spite of everything, her mother was born in Harlem hospital, though Atta-Mensah received’t share what 12 months — for her personal private security, she joked.
Past her Harlem heritage, Atta-Mensah additionally stays true to her organizer roots. Final month, Mayor Zohran Mamdani appointed her as town’s chief fairness officer and commissioner of the Mayor’s Workplace of Fairness & Racial Justice (MOERJ) after she served as his marketing campaign’s senior political director.
Nevertheless, Atta-Mensah spent most of her profession holding energy accountable slightly than merely holding energy, significantly by her earlier work with Neighborhood Voices Heard and the City Justice Middle. She got here into such organizing work after beginning as a “disaffected” authorized service legal professional, which led to her championing housing rights for years.
Atta-Mensah performed a key hand in 5 mayoral candidates, together with spending an evening at a dilapidated East Harlem public housing improvement at Rev. Al Sharpton’s behest again in 2013. Atta-Mensah recalled mildew and a scarcity of operating water plaguing the residences. The eventual election winner, then-Public Advocate Invoice de Blasio, participated and shortly vowed to deal with points NYCHA residents confronted. Atta-Mensah believes the Mamdani administration can construct on such efforts.
“That was not simply informative for me, however impactful and highly effective for residents to have people stroll a mile of their sneakers after which form coverage that’s primarily based [on] that firsthand data,” mentioned Atta-Mensah. “I hope there [are] features of this that may be related. We hope to form our coverage and motion primarily based [on] the lived experiences of what individuals have mentioned have impacted them by having companies raise up what has not met the wants of the communities they serve and provides suggestions for how you can change that.”
Her new position largely focuses on town’s much-delayed racial fairness plan and stems from a poll measure New York Metropolis voters overwhelmingly supported again in 2022. MOERJ shaped in October 2023 below inaugural Commissioner and Chief Fairness Officer Sideya Sherman. The workplace engages with each metropolis company on shaping racial fairness, in addition to bolstering present variety packages among the many municipal workforce, resembling NYC Males Educate, which helps male lecturers.
“[The MOERJ commissioner] is somebody whose imaginative and prescient will imbue each company throughout metropolis authorities with a give attention to fairness and racial justice,” Mamdani instructed the AmNews final month. “I’m so excited in our alternative — Afua Atta-Mensah — to be that individual, as a result of what she has proven me again and again is not only that focus however that capacity to ship these sorts of outcomes.”
Mamdani vowed to launch the inaugural preliminary racial fairness plan inside his first 100 days after the earlier Adams administration missed a number of deadlines and the report was then indefinitely postponed pending authorized evaluate. Final August, the impartial NYC Fee on Racial Fairness (CORE), which supplies an oversight and accountability test for MOERJ, sued Adams over the delays.
The preliminary plan will enable public enter after every metropolis company formulates features of their particular person fairness plans. A last plan comes out after evaluate and remark, with authentic intentions to align with town’s budgeting course of. “Then the position of this workplace is to make sure that we’re shifting ahead on the implementation of the suggestions popping out of the finalized plan,” mentioned Atta-Mensah.
A tall job awaits her, significantly with the huge variety of metropolis companies. Atta-Mensah additionally is aware of the general public is “rightly” vital of the federal government’s unfulfilled guarantees. She believes publishing the plan on time will present a small step ahead in restoring belief.
Regardless of her optimism, Atta-Mensah stays keenly conscious of nationwide efforts concentrated towards racial fairness work, together with by the federal administration. Working below Mamdani, the frequent goal of conservative assaults comes with extra scrutiny. Atta-Mensah herself confronted outsized backlash after her appointment from right-wing media and racist trolls, arguably a redundant distinction at this level — such opposition simply reinforces the significance of town’s racial fairness efforts to her.
“It’s essential for individuals to know that fairness doesn’t imply harming others,” Atta-Mensah mentioned. “It means we’re understanding that totally different individuals — for historic and present causes — have racial, gendered, and different hurdles which have prevented people from accessing authorities companies in a means that’s truthful, and we search to start out the work of rectifying that, and [to] maintain town accountable for doing such.”
Atta-Mensah acknowledged that “It ain’t gonna be simple, however I hope New Yorkers will proceed to have the identical power they’d in 2022, after they voted for this, [in] 2026 to assist [and] raise up the work of the workplace, and to carry us accountable.”
