Mamdani panel pick faces claims over WHDC racism

Zohran Mamdani’s new advisory panel on the judiciary is facing fresh scrutiny after one of its members was accused in court papers of allowing racism and antisemitism to go unchecked at a West Harlem nonprofit. The judge at the center of the dispute is Milton Tingling, who was appointed last month to Mamdani’s Advisory Committee on the Judiciary and also serves as board chair of the West Harlem Development Corporation.

The allegations come from a lawsuit filed by former board member Vince Morgan, who says the nonprofit’s executive director, Zaed Ramadan, engaged in a pattern of discriminatory conduct at work. The filing says Ramadan made racist and antisemitic remarks and used offensive language aimed at Jews and other minorities. Morgan says he raised concerns with Tingling in February 2024 through a whistleblower complaint and later recorded conversations with his boss because he feared the claims would be dismissed if left as a simple verbal dispute.

According to the court papers, Ramadan’s conduct intensified after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel, when he allegedly held a two-hour meeting in Morgan’s office with New York State Assemblyman Charles Fall and Brooklyn imam Siraj Wahhaj to discuss the organization’s response. Wahhaj has long been a controversial figure, and the filing identifies him as someone once named an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and as a religious leader who urged jihad on New York City in the early 2000s.

After that meeting, Morgan says Ramadan told him he had learned how to use language that would avoid clear antisemitic wording while still sending anti-Israel and anti-Jewish messages. The lawsuit alleges Ramadan spoke about Jewish greed and claimed Jews were trying to control and manipulate New York politics. It also says Ramadan made remarks about former Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine and his staff in a way that, according to Morgan, reflected his belief that Jews unfairly control New York at the expense of other faith and ethnic groups. Levine is now New York City comptroller.