Mayor John Cooper
A resignation from a lower-level staffer in the mayor's office last month highlights concerns among the immigrant advocacy community about Mayor John Cooper’s commitment to their cause.
Frohar Mirzai tendered her resignation as liaison for the Mayor’s Office of New Americans on Dec. 6, barely two weeks after she started work. Her position was a step down from past mayoral administrations. Since Mayor Karl Dean's tenure, the office had a full-time, senior-level director, most recently Vanessa Lazón, who stepped down after Cooper’s victory earlier this year.
“After carefully reviewing Vanessa Lazón’s transition binder, I have come to the conclusion that the New Americans liaison position carries a responsibility to the community that require[s] more than a lower level staff position and more than one person to do it effectively,” Mirzai wrote in her resignation letter, the emphasis hers. “In addition to that, it appears that Vanessa was indeed overwhelmed with the workload and very little to none assistance. There is the appearance that the position of director has been downgraded. Myself and the community is justifiably upset.”
Mirzai — who, like Lazón, declined to comment — was referring to consternation among immigrant rights groups about Cooper’s appointment of a lower-level hire to the post.
Sabina Mohyuddin, executive director of the Nashville-based American Muslim Advisory Council, calls the appointment “a downgrade.”
“For our community, it felt like we weren’t given priority,” she says. “This should be a director’s position and nothing less.”
The mayor’s office is heeding the call. On Friday, Cooper spokesperson Chris Song says the administration is now searching for a director-level leader for the Office of New Americans, currently overseen in the interim by Fabian Bedne, who was hired to work on neighborhood infrastructure and development.
“While our search for a director-level New Americans staff member continues, we look forward to continuing to collaborate with our friends in the immigrant community,” Song says. “Their input is critical as we work together to build a Nashville that works for everyone.”
Neither Mohyuddin nor Stephanie Teatro, co-director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, were aware Friday that Cooper had changed his mind and decided to follow his predecessors in appointing a director-level head of the Office of New Americans.
“The campaign was really centered on the idea of making Nashville a city that works for everyone, and that was the idea behind the creation of the Office of New Americans many years ago: to ensure that the city's biggest priorities — education, transportation or whatever — are inclusive of the city’s diverse and quickly growing immigrant population,” Teatro says. “We hope to see a vibrant Office of New Americans as part of this administration.”
Mohyuddin and Teatro both say they worried about how the mayor’s office could implement recommendations from Cooper’s immigration task force, including those related to Metro cooperation with federal immigration authorities, without a full-time staffer dedicated to immigration issues.
“Nashville was the first city in the South to create an office of new Americans under Mayor Dean, [and] it really helped to cement Nashville's reputation as one of the most forward-thinking Southern cities on immigration,” Teatro says. “To our knowledge there has not been an example of a city losing that office.”
