‘Sounds fishy/illegal’: Mamdani to prioritize city resources for ‘black and brown’ people, feds ‘will review’

Democratic New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled a “racial equity plan” on Monday, which an assistant U.S. attorney general immediately suggested may be illegal and would be reviewed.

The avowed socialist mayor unveiled his Preliminary Citywide Racial Equity Plan and True Cost of Living Measure during a Monday morning press conference, where he argued the proposed framework will develop a “whole of government approach” to even the playing field for “black and brown New Yorkers.” Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon wrote shortly after that the Big Apple mayor’s newest policy proposal sounds “fishy” and “illegal.”

“And while today’s True Cost of Living Measure confirms that the affordability crisis touches every corner of our city, we know that these effects are not applied evenly. So often it is black and brown New Yorkers who are hit the hardest,” Mamdani said during his press conference. “This Preliminary Racial Equity plan is the first step in developing a whole-of-government approach to tackling that reality.”

He noted that the plan “lays out these first steps to solve decades of neglect and discrimination” and “places the work of 45 city agencies within a singular framework.”

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“Too often, the story of black and brown New Yorkers is one of being forced to stretch that same dollar that little bit further. Every year as wages stagnate, as well as an exodus and exclusion continues to take place,” he continued. “When I say exodus, I refer to the fact that from 2000 to 2020 more than 200,000 black New Yorkers were pushed out of the city because they could not afford life in the most expensive city in the United States of America, because rent was too high, child care was too expensive, and groceries cost too much.”

“I ran for mayor on an affordability agenda because we know that we cannot solve this crisis without reckoning with the fact that the neighborhoods hit hardest by rent and the rising nature of it, by childcare costs and the suffocating manner of it, are the same ones that have been hit for years by institutional neglect and racism,” Mamdani aded. “In that way, New York City’s affordability crisis and its history of racial inequity are bound together.”

“Sounds fishy/illegal. Will review!” Dhillon wrote in a Monday X post, replying to a clip of Mamdani’s press conference posted by conservative commentator Brandon Straka.

Dhillon has been mentioned as a possible contender to replace former Attorney General Pam Bondi, whom President Donald Trump fired on Thursday.

Mamdani’s office and the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division each did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.

The socialist mayor also noted during his press conference that after his city had formed a more than one billion dollar partnership with Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to fulfill his campaign promise of universal child care, “we made sure to begin with the neighborhoods that have so often been overlooked.” He went to name Canarsie, Brownsville and Far Rockaway, which are all heavily black areas of New York City’s outer boroughs.

“We also know that the dream of home ownership has been denied to too many New Yorkers due to redlining, FHA [Federal Housing Administration] loan discrimination and deed theft. That is why we are not only fast tracking the building of more than 1,000 affordable housing units, but breaking ground on new developments in Myrtle Avenue in Bed Stuy, Jerome Avenue in the Bronx and Farmers Boulevard in Queens,” Mamdani said, again referring to majority-minority areas.

“As we finalize this plan, we will continue to tackle our city’s affordability crisis without turning away from the decades, and frankly, centuries of disinvestment in black and brown New Yorkers,” Mamdani emphasized.

Afua Atta-Mensah, the mayor’s Chief Equity Officer and commissioner 0f his Office of Equity & Racial Justice, also spoke at the press conference announcing the two equity proposals.

“This plan was born during a defining moment in our city’s history, when New Yorkers were in the streets in the midst of a global pandemic, calling for justice, demanding accountability and bearing witness to brutality unfolding on our streets and on our screens,” she said. “In that moment, our city was asked to reckon with the deep, systemic inequities that have long shaped life here and to do better.”

“New Yorkers across all five boroughs answered that call. Their voices, their advocacy and their persistence are what brought us to this moment. The release of the Preliminary Citywide Racial Equity Plan is a reflection of that collective mandate,” Atta-Mensah continued. “It is not just a document, it is a commitment. A commitment to confront institutional and systemic racism within our city and to begin the work of dismantling it.”

Mamdani’s proposed plan “is the first governmentwide racial equity framework in the city’s history, outlining data-driven agency goals, strategies and indicators to address long-standing disparities across public policy, services and practices,” according to the website of New York City’s government.

The plan as well as the True Cost of Living Measure were both “mandated by successful voter referendums in 2022,” four years before Mamdani took office, per the website.

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