By Howard Horowitz

At a recent gathering in New Rochelle, a veteran community organizer discussed the importance of  “giving people a sense of their power,” developing ongoing relationships and continually engaging with people who can be inspired to take action.

The results of New Rochelle’s school board election this year revealed weaknesses in the ability of local organizers to tap into this wise counsel. Two highly qualified, solid candidates — a Latina professor of education leadership and a Black businessman — ran on a clear platform that called for equity in our public schools, attending to the needs of vulnerable student populations, and a school budget that reflects these priorities. They lost. 

This outcome means that New Rochelle’s majority-minority school children (75% of the student body) lost their majority representation on the school board. Instead, two white candidates put forth by the Jewish minority from the North End of the city won the school board election. Post-election analysis of voter turnout clearly shows how a motivated and empowered minority of registered voters were able to capture the election.

The data on voter turnout suggests, however, that New Rochelle’s majority-minority community has great potential political power if it can be mobilized.

The school board election reflects the formation of a political caucus within the Democratic Party, the Westchester Jewish Democrats (WJD). Their formation and acceptance as a caucus by local Democratic District Leaders is part of an organized, explicit campaign transpiring across the county, state, and country to elect pro-Israel candidates for local office.

The WJD focused on a pro-Israel, single-issue agenda amid Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Even as its stated goal is to represent Jewish interests in the face of antisemitism, the caucus promotes the false idea that Zionism is inherent to Jewish heritage and religion. This enables these political actors to label any criticism of Israel as antisemitic. This was a central and libelous refrain deployed in New Rochelle’s school board election that led to the defeat of the city’s candidates of color. 

Some political activists believe a more transparent, accurate name for this caucus would be  the “Westchester Israel Democrats.” The WJD has and will continue to try to get local school boards and town/city councils to adopt the controversial IHRA definition of antisemitism, which uses criticism of Israel as an example of antisemitism (e.g., “Manifestations [of antisemitism] might include the targeting of the state of Israel”). To adopt the IHRA definition as policy or law suppresses free speech including anyone’s freedom to question and to object to the fact that tax dollars support Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The drive to elect pro-Israel candidates runs counter to a progressive racial, economic, and climate-justice agenda. Witness first-hand the sorry result of the Israel-first agenda in New Rochelle’s recent school board election. The same strategy was deployed last year to defeat US Representative Jamaal Bowman, a Black progressive whose 16th Congressional District included New Rochelle.  

With financial support from the asset-rich American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel, white candidate replaced Bowman.  The pattern extends across the country as the Israel-first agenda was used successfully to defeat Cori Bush, a progressive, Black, incumbent Congressperson from Missouri, and in the attempt to unseat Representative Delia Ramirez in Chicago. These are but a few examples of AIPAC money being used to unseat BIPOC and other candidates (including Jewish candidates) who stand for a progressive, social justice agenda. 

AIPAC knows how to mobilize its committed base and knows how to intimidate opponents using fear-mongering tactics. It openly boasts their victories over progressive candidates for whom critiquing Israel as an apartheid ethnostate is consistent with their pro-justice and human rights platforms.

Those who have adopted support of Israel as the singular and deciding domestic policy issue in Westchester, in the 16^th Congressional District, and in New Rochelle, have given their Jewish supporters a sense of their power to vote as a block, thus having their way against candidates of color and anyone else who is consistently progressive. They use smear and fear tactics to mobilize Jewish voters, many of whom would otherwise support minority-majority candidates and a racial and economic justice platform.

In strategic and tactical terms, the “Westchester Israel Dems” gave their supporters a sense of their voting power, and those voters used it.

By harnessing the potential power of voters, candidates for office seeking to represent the city’s majority-minority communities have three distinct advantages over the single-issue candidates and constituencies:

1. New Rochelle’s communities – students, families, working people, Black/African American and Latino/a and many Jewish people rooted in immigrant and racial justice values – are the clear majority of registered voters in city and school district-wide elections;
2. New Rochelle’s communities have a broad set of domestic and local issues that the “Westchester Israel Dems” work against or work to unseat; and
3. The tide is clearly turning on the AIPAC-Israel agenda. Its popularity is waning, and people are becoming wise to its false accusations of antisemitism thrown at Jews and non-Jews who oppose the death and destruction of Palestinians. National polls show that between 70-90% of Democrats are opposed to Israel’s actions in Gaza and are in favor of an arms embargo of offensive weapons. It is getting more and more difficult to convince Democrats that sending arms to a foreign country that practices de facto and de jure white supremacy jibes with being for racial, economic and climate justice here. They simply cannot square the circle with a growing number of voters.

Conversations with voters while canvassing in New Rochelle’s last school board elections revealed that too many did not plan to vote, having been disenfranchised and ignored for too long. They seem to have given up believing their vote could make any difference. Of course, their votes would have made the difference in seating the pro-equity, pro-racial justice candidates, one an expert on education leadership and the other on fiscal matters, on the New Rochelle Board of Education.

How might New Rochelle’s activists translate wise counsel about  “giving people a sense of their power” into mobilizing those who feel disenfranchised and ignored? How can organizers be allies in the collective struggle for mutual aid, a caring economy and racial justice? Beyond election season, what steps can be taken to ensure continuous engagement with those voters who local organizers hope to inspire to action?  

These questions must be answered and these steps must be taken to marshal the potential power of New Rochelle’s majority-minority voters in advance of the next round of elections. The time is now.

Howard Horowitz is a long-time New Rochelle resident.