My experience trying to contact NYC's Office to Combat Antisemitism
Hey, fellow Redditors! New York City's Office to Combat Antisemitism has been in the news a lot lately, so I just wanted to share my experience with it.
I saw this article in the New York Post about a hearing where Phylicia Wisdom, the current head of the OCA who is a "liberal Zionist" handpicked by Mamdani, was grilled by local government officials because the office no longer has an official definition of antisemitism. Our last mayor adopted the IHRA definition, but Mamdani scrapped it during his first week in office. One complaint I remember hearing about the OCA was that they had no phone number. But I know the Office of the Mayor also doesn't have a direct phone number, and since the NYP tends to be kind of sensationalist in its reporting, I decided to see if it was as bad as the Post said.
Trying to Google the OCA just led me to news articles that were a few years old which were reporting on Mayor Adams' creation of the office. So I had to find it by going to the NYC City Hall website and look for it in a list of all the city offices, because trying to search for it on the city website also yielded no results. I managed to find the page. https://www.nyc.gov/main/combat-antisemitism
There is indeed no phone number. There is also no email listed. In order to try and get through to anyone, you have to fill out this contact form: https://www.nyc.gov/main/forms/contact-combat-antisemitism which has a limit of 500 characters. The form says to contact the NYPD or call 911 to report a crime. I went back to the list of city offices to see if I could find an email address for Phylicia Wisdom. If you click on her name on the page that has the list of all offices, you're directed back to the contact form.
The information on the page is pretty sparse. The section titled "Recent Events and Services" only lists 5 things, none of which have dates saying when they occurred, and no links to news articles or press releases to find out more. The most egregious one I saw was about Mamdani's "Listening Tour." Here's all the information provided:
>The Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism is currently embarking on a listening tour with scores of New Yorkers, which will be used to inform a report and a subsequent strategy on combatting antisemitism in New York City—the first municipal strategy of its kind.
That's it. There's no dates listed, so locations given, no way to find out information about how to attend or participate or how to request the mayor visit a certain location on this tour that's supposedly happening. And since there are no dates, last week it said the mayor is currently embarking on this tour, and it will also say he's currently embarking on this tour 3 months from now.
I used the contact form to ask where I could find more information about this listening tour that's supposedly currently happening. I hadn't heard anything after a few days, so I called 311, NYC's non-emergency number to do everything from filing a noise complaint to finding out when alternate-side parking is happening.
The 311 operator, who was lovely and polite, was also unable to find any additional ways to contact the office. She told me to just use the form, and said that contact form is pretty standard for most city offices. I told her I had, but hadn't heard anything. She assured me someone would answer and my message would be read by a real human being.
It's been 12 days, and I've still heard no response from the OCA. Unfortunately, I can't say I'm surprised. Obviously, I'm incredibly frustrated.
I just wanted to put that out there and share my experience. Mamdani likes to act like he's doing significant things to deal with antisemitism in this city. But if it's this hard to get through to the OCA, I think people should be aware that this office might be little more than a fig leaf.