EMILYs List Statement on Chi Ossé’s Disparaging Tweets

For Immediate Release 

June 16, 2021

EMILYs List Statement on Chi Ossé’s Disparaging Tweets

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Sarah Curmi, vice president of state and local campaigns at EMILYs List, released the following statement in response to the numerous disparaging tweets made by New York City Council candidate Chi Ossé. The tweets from the past two years include derogatory comments against women, the LGBTQ+ community, religious groups, and jokes minimizing mental illness.

“Chi Ossé owes the people of New York City an apology. We are disheartened to see that someone running to lead in such a progressive and diverse city would share hateful comments about the very communities that make New York great. At EMILYs List, we believe it’s critical to elect people who not only represent but also respect the qualities that make us who we are.”

EMILYs List-endorsed candidate, Tahirah A. Moore, shared the following response with PoliticsNY:

“The communities deserve an apology. If you want to be a leader in the community, and you’ve done or said something that is harmful, your first inclination should always be to apologize,” said Moore, the former Brooklyn borough director in the NYC Mayor’s Community Affairs Unit who was instrumental in getting a community center in NYCHA’s Marcy Houses where she grew up.

EMILYs List, the nation’s largest resource for women in politics, has raised over $700 million to elect Democratic pro-choice women candidates. With a grassroots community of over five million members, EMILY's List helps Democratic women win competitive campaigns – across the country and up and down the ballot – by recruiting and training candidates, supporting and helping build strong campaigns, researching the issues that impact women and families, running nearly $50 million in independent expenditures in the last cycle alone, and turning out women voters and voters of color to the polls. Since our founding in 1985, we have helped elect the country's first woman as vice president, 157 women to the House, 26 to the Senate, 16 governors, and more than 1,300 women to state and local office. More than 40 percent of the candidates EMILYs List has helped elect to Congress have been women of color. After the 2016 election, more than 60,000 women reached out to EMILY's List about running for office laying the groundwork for the next decade of candidates for local, state, and national offices. In our effort to elect more women in offices across the country, we have created our Run to Win program, expanded our training program, including a Training Center online, and trained thousands of women.