Jamaal Bowman shocked the political establishment by defeating 16-term incumbent Eliot Engel in New York’s 16th Congressional district, which includes the northern Bronx and the souther part of Westchester County. Bowman, a 44-year-old middle school teacher, was the surprising victor among the two, receiving a whopping 56% of the vote to Engel’s 40%. But there was one mighty faction that helped push Bowman over the edge: a campaign called #JewsForJamaal. The initiative was carried out by The Jewish Vote (TJV), a Jewish organization hoping to redefine the narrative around what progressive American Jews want from their political candidates. And, with the momentum of Bowman’s landslide victory behind them, the organization is more prepared than ever to dive into the political sphere.TJV was the first New York grassroots group to endorse Bowman, doing so back in December 2019. Formed in 2018, it is the electoral arm of Jews For Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ) — a 30-year-old grassroots organization that has been mobilizing in the most pivotal struggles for justice since its inception. After the 2016 election, JFREJ members began to feel that something more explicit around campaign organizing needed to exist within their membership and community. They were also spurred by the campaign of JFREJ staff member Julia Salazar’s 2018 campaign for State Senate (a race she would go on to win). So, they decided to “to carve out space in the progressive wing of the Democratic party for Jews to organize unapologetically as Jews,” Rachel McCullough, the political director of TJV, told Refinery29.
“We recognized that the establishment of the Jewish community, like the establishment of the Democratic party, was increasingly out of touch with our community and we needed a vehicle with which to fight for [things like] guaranteed Medicare for All, a Green New Deal,” McCullough says. “We needed a Jewish arm of the Justice Democrats to unseat corporate real estate Dems from the legislature in New York and ensure a vibrant home for New York-left Jews to organize.”
Poster Comment:
Truly a marriage made in Hell. I hope they torment one anther unto eternity, as long as they leave the rest of us alone.