Our Hope: A New Mayor and a New Agenda for all New Yorkers Progressive Jewish Group respond to Mayoral Election

For interviews contact:
Andrew Stettner, Executive Director, 212.647.8966
Jeremy Burton, former advisor to Ruth Messinger and David Dinkins, 646.424.9010
Esther Kaplan, producer, Beyond the Pale: the Progressive Jewish Radio Hour, 718.596.6143

As progressive Jews we congratulate Michael Bloomberg on his election as Mayor of New York City. The Mayor-elect now faces the difficult challenge of uniting our City after a closely divided election and a troubling and divisive political campaign season. Like all New Yorkers, we hope that as we move forward we can come together to rebuild our City and face the challenges of the future as we address the problems of today.
JFREJ joins with all New Yorkers in extending our best wishes and hopes for the success of our next Mayor in facing these enormous burdens.

In the coming weeks Mayor-elect Bloomberg has the opportunity to convey his plan for rebuilding and to show New Yorkers the kind of administration he will lead. We were encouraged by Mr. Bloomberg's message in victory, and we hope that he will rise to that vision by governing not as a partisan, but as a New Yorker inviting all of us to "the" party. We are heartened by his pledge to build an administration from all the people of our City and we will support his efforts to lead a City Hall that truly includes all New Yorkers. We will especially support efforts to include communities that have been excluded in the past and specifically the Arab-American and Muslim community whose voices and concerns have been ignored.

As we look to the next four years, we are also more than a little anxious. For eight years Mayor Giuliani has overseen policies that have worsened racial divisions in New York City, and have taken a huge toll on low-income and immigrant communities. Mayor-elect Bloomberg has said that he will continue the policies of the Giuliani administration, a decision that could have even more disastrous effects in our city in the years to come. At a time when an economic downturn will most heavily hit low-income workers and neighborhoods, we fear that Mr. Bloomberg will turn all eyes to Wall Street, squandering precious public resources on tax breaks in the name of job growth. Looming budget cuts could devastate communities who depend on publicly supported health care, housing and youth services. Moreover, as Arab, South Asian and Muslim New Yorkers live on the edge, a continuation of Mayor Giuliani's endorsed stop-and-frisk/quality-of-life policing policies can threaten civil liberties in previously unimaginable ways.

We call on Mayor-elect Bloomberg to take another route, rooted in his origins and building upon the values of social justice embedded in his Jewish upbringing. As a public school graduate, we hope that he will fulfill his pledge to reverse the underfunding of city schools. We encourage him to value the public services that enhanced the "middle-class Jewish origins" he celebrates, and, we implore him to make City Hall responsive to the needs of all New Yorkers again.

For the last 8 years, JFREJ has been one of the leading Jewish groups who has worked to build multi-racial coalitions to effectively challenge the most retrogressive of Mayor Giuliani's policies, helping to significantly dent the mayor's agenda on policing and school privatization. Coalitions between progressive Jews, labor unions, and communities of color will continue to be of vital importance in the coming years. Like many in the city, JFREJ hoped that this election would begin an era of government led by a progressive majority coalition. What this racially charged election season has done to that promising political potential leaves us greatly disturbed. There is still much reckoning to be done amongst Jews and all New Yorkers and we call on others in our City join us in the many needed and hard conversations that lie ahead. We invite New Yorkers to join us in the beginning of this discussion on Beyond the Pale: The Progressive Jewish Radio Hour on WBAI 99.5FM where we will discuss the election results on Sunday, November 18th at 11am. ###

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