The mission of Justice Democrats is to push for as much left-populist legislation as Washington will accommodate, with the understanding that what Washington will accommodate is a function, in part, of who gets elected. “But my policies align with those of a socialist”-grin, shrug-“so I guess that makes me a socialist.” “I identify as an educator and as a Black man in America,” he said in a video interview with the Intercept. Seeing an opportunity, Justice Democrats had encouraged Bowman, a middle-school principal in his forties and an avid supporter of the Black Lives Matter and environmental-justice movements, to run a long-shot primary campaign against Engel. He was also a moderate Democrat-militarily and monetarily hawkish, and a recipient of numerous corporate donations-in an increasingly progressive district. But he was a seventy-three-year-old white man whose constituents were relatively young and racially diverse. Since being elected, in 1988, Engel had breezed through fifteen reëlection campaigns, usually without serious competition.

He had no staff with him, and his phone was dead.īowman was running to replace Eliot Engel, who represented southern Westchester and the North Bronx in Congress. Bowman was still out campaigning, urging voters at crowded polls to stay in line.

A lectern, framed by string lights and uplit pine trees, stood empty, apart from a sign bearing their candidate’s name: Jamaal Bowman. Most of the staffers hadn’t seen one another in person since COVID lockdowns began, and their hesitant enthusiasm-distant air hugs, cocktails sipped hastily between remaskings-seemed appropriate to the event, which could, at any moment, turn into either a victory party or a defeat vigil. It was a breezy Tuesday night, and polls in the congressional primary had just closed. Last June, when most Americans could agree that their country was in crisis but few could agree on what to do about it, staffers from a small organization called Justice Democrats-part of a burgeoning faction of young activists whose goal is to push the Democratic Party, and thus the entire political spectrum, to the left-joined a gathering on the patio of a restaurant in Yonkers, overlooking the Hudson. This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from.

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