Political Autobiography

It was almost pre-ordained that I would be involved in politics in some way. I grew up in a liberal, upper middle class, secular Jewish household in Brooklyn. Current events and politics were discussed around the dinner table, and I was always expected to have an opinion; there was no kids’ table. I remember being woken up by a newspaper thrown into my bed so that I could read the headline that Bill Clinton had won reelection; Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch and FDR were my heroes; Bob Dylan and NPR were a constant soundtrack. My father had made his closest friends protesting the Vietnam War and spent most of his career in public service. My mother, who is from the Netherlands, had been involved in European anti-colonialist movements in her 20s, and joined the Million Mom March in Washington after the Columbine shooting. 

Perhaps most significantly, I am the grandchild of Holocaust survivors. From a young age, I was made keenly aware of the possible consequences of extreme prejudice and oppression. For my family, that meant that we, as Jews, had a particular obligation to stand up against injustice. There was also an unspoken expectation to contribute something to the world, given that our family had survived when so many had not. All this was on top of the general narrative told by the progressive Jewish community, that of a commitment to “tikkun olam,” repairing the world. At Passover, our retelling of the Exodus story called for freedom and justice in the contemporary context, including for Palestinians, women, and those suffering from AIDS.

My father’s parents came to New York as refugees and proceeded to live the American Dream. They worked hard, lived comfortably, and their son went to college and law school, ultimately becoming a judge. This story provided concrete support for the fundamental promise of America and fueled a deep, progressive patriotism. This was the melting pot, where everyone could pull themselves up by their bootstraps, where rule of law and democracy prevailed. Any blemishes were not foundational, endemic flaws; they were obstacles to overcome in bringing reality closer to the ideal. 

In this way, throughout my childhood and early adulthood, politics and social justice were presented as ways to participate both in my family’s legacy and in the American project. Within weeks of arriving at college, I was registering voters with the college Democrats. Voting, to me, was the most wholesome of political activities, the simplest manifestation of the privileges and obligations of American citizenship, and the purest action of political agency. I went canvassing almost every weekend and ran the campus GOTV effort for Obama.  The night he was elected was euphoric, with a spontaneous, tearful celebration in the center of campus. I became deeply bonded with a large campus political community, friends who had achieved something together. In many ways, this experience reinforced my faith in the American system. It felt like the real-life version of the West Wing: through politics, I could make both positive change and meaningful relationships. 

In college, I also visited Israel for the first time. Unlike most Jewish college students, my first exposure was explicitly about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I literally and metaphorically saw the West Bank before I ever saw the Western Wall. I split my weeks between volunteering for human rights organizations in Bethlehem and Jerusalem and staying with my cousins in Tel Aviv, who provided an Israeli perspective to every aspect of the occupation I challenged them with. Just like with America, I felt moved by and committed to the ideals on which Israel had been founded, but I saw the occupation to be in huge contrast with those ideals. The Jewish state did not represent my Jewish values, and as a Jew and my grandparent’s granddaughter, I had a particular obligation to confront this reality. The trip proved to have a dramatic impact on both my Jewish and political identity. After college, I got a dream job at J Street, a controversial new organization seeking to provide a progressive Jewish voice in Washington in support of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The six years I worked for J Street U - J Street’s campus-focused branch - were transformational. The founding director of J Street U brought the skills and ethos of relational organizing to our team. It was here that I learned about building and leveraging power, about strategy and self-interest, how to run an action, do a 1:1, and write and run trainings. I was able to put my most deeply held beliefs into action along with passionate, whip-smart, irreverent people. We made what Congressman John Lewis would call “good trouble.” I found the process of leadership development to be particularly rewarding - holy, almost. Relational organizing emphasizes building power through genuine curiosity, making meaning of stories, vulnerability, personal growth, and intentionally cultivated relationships of mutual accountability and investment. Almost everyone trained by J Street U was transformed into more powerful, thoughtful people. 

At some point I had the epiphany that this was the purpose of organizing. To truly transform our politics, we have to fundamentally shift who has power in our society. Organizing is not only about concrete wins, but about building a constituency of people who have the capacity to act strategically, and together, in their collective interest. Ultimately, organizing is about individuals regaining access to personal and collective power - power that is their birthright but stolen from them by systems of oppression. This was only reinforced in the organizing roles I’ve had since. For example, I watched a woman in a housing project in Brooklyn be transformed by the realization that by showing up at her building manager’s office with 15 people, she was able to get the attention she could not get by herself. Accordingly, leadership development, bringing an understanding of power to more people, connecting individual experiences to systemic issues, creating opportunities for transformation through organizing, and building the Left (broadly defined) are now the focus of my career. I’m working towards my MSW to bring therapeutic tools into that work, and to bring organizing to therapy. 

For much of my life, the glaring gap in my political development was around racial justice. I was brought up with liberal, 90s-era “color blindness,” and a limited understanding of racism as something overt. I did not think of myself as white, but as Ashkenazi. Though I was able to develop a keen power analysis about the power differential (and therefore the responsibility differential) between the Israeli and Palestinian governments, I did not apply this same understanding to racial dynamics in America. The misty-eyed part of my progressive patriotism balked at any suggestion that America was fundamentally flawed. I understood those who used the language of privilege and oppression - especially on college campuses where I was working - as “radical,” unstrategic, and unrealistic. My politics were about being effective - shouting into the void for policies that would never come to fruition was not effective. 

The first crack in these beliefs came around gender. At J Street U, I objected vociferously to a conversation about how to approach gender dynamics with our students. My colleagues pointed out that female students seemed to speak up less, and less quickly, than male students, and wondered if we should change anything about our training spaces. I argued out that I had no problem speaking up, and I was a woman - surely, since I did not feel oppressed, the oppression must not exist. My team sat me down and patiently got me to understand that just because something didn’t impact me didn’t mean it wasn’t true. Thinking otherwise was privilege. It’s important to note that I was only able to be agitated in this way because we had the “intentionally cultivated relationships” created through organizing. 

Once I was able to recognize dynamics of privilege and oppression around gender, it became easier to see other forms of systemic oppression, including white supremacy and racism. Here, too, I was lucky to have organizer-friends who continued to agitate me. I went to my first Black Lives Matter protest with my friend Jacob, who explained to me why “All Lives Matter” was a problematic thing to say; my college roommate and I discussed her experiences as a Chinese-American woman in tech; there began to be conversations within my community about what it meant to be white and Jewish. I was particularly pushed to overcome disagreements or discomfort I had about message, strategy, or scope when it came to racial justice organizing, especially when brought by directly impacted communities. The Trump years made this particularly important. Slowly, through reading, organizing spaces, and agitational conversations, I began to try to align myself with anti-racism in my political work, in terms of policies and candidates I support, actions I attend, and money I donate. 

For a long time, however, I disregarded introspection about my own, interpersonal racism. Personal work seemed apolitical - it let people off the hook from contributing anything to macro-level politics, as long as they were “kind,” introspective, used the right vocabulary, and read the right books. It felt similar to those who thought climate change would be resolved by changing light bulbs instead of organizing to destroy the fossil fuel industry’s power in politics. Focusing on individual work felt like a manifestation of not understanding power. In the summer of 2020, at the height of the pandemic and in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, I started thinking differently. 

I started working through Layla Saad’s book, Me and White Supremacy, with two close friends. Each week, the book challenged us to consider how we were racist every day. My interactions with colleagues, my fears on the subway, my reactions to being called out, my treatment of service workers - all were cast in a new light. Reading at Smith, especially hooks and Yancy, connected these individual acts of interpersonal racism to the fabric of white supremacy. I’m now learning about somatics and reading Resmaa Menakem’s My Grandmother’s Hands, prompting new thinking about the limits of combating anti-racism cognitively. I make mistakes, and try to hold myself accountable to them. 

I try to recommit to this work, personally and politically, every day. I’m currently grappling with the following questions: How can I continue to hold myself accountable to anti-racism beyond intellectualizing? How can I ensure that this work isn’t primarily in service of my own personal development but rather for actual racial justice? What am I willing to risk or give up for racial justice? What is my role in racial justice organizing as a white person? How will I put my learning into practice as a white, anti-racist organizer, therapist, and organizer-therapist?

This was written in Nov., 2021 and reflective of my thoughts at that time. As with all my writing, I welcome challenge, agitation & feedback.