In one of the scariest moments in modern history, we're doing our best at ScheerPost to pierce the fog of lies that conceal it but we need some help to pay our writers and staff. Please consider a tax-deductible donation.
By Joshua Scheer
First off, happy New Year. Late last night, Zohran Mamdani was sworn in deep in the bowels of a New York City subway station. Then this morning, on my reading list, was Molly Crabapple writing about the rich Jewish tradition the new mayor comes from.
While many branded him an antisemite, Molly writes for the Guardian: “For all the hysteria, when I look at Mamdani, I don’t see some radical departure from the past. I see him as the heir to an old and venerable Jewish tradition — that of Yiddish socialism — which helped build New York.”
His politics stand not outside New York’s Jewish history, but firmly within its rich tradition of socialist struggle, solidarity, and justice.
I asked our publisher, Robert Scheer, a longtime New York resident, about this tradition. Some of his perspective is biographical — he’s the son of a Jewish socialist labor organizer — and he also spoke about the city’s rich socialist tradition among its leaders and citizens, a tradition that has helped lead us to this moment.
Here is Bob’s response, a transcript refined for clarity and readability:
Well, there’s no doubt that Yiddish socialism was the dominant view among Jews in New York. That’s where their reputation for liberalism starts. And it grew out of their experience coming from the shtetl life of Eastern Europe. They were not welcomed by the German Jews who had entered much earlier and who actually still venerated Germany — until Germany started killing all the Jews. They had respected Germany. They had contempt for the Eastern European Jews.
That’s where my mother’s family comes from. My mother left after the Bolshevik Revolution. She came out of the Jewish Labor Bund, and they were denounced by Lenin and the Communist Party. So my mother had to leave in 1921 and come to New York — but she was arrested in the first few weeks after arriving, trying to organize garment workers.
The Jewish population from Eastern Europe were shtetl Jews who had been denied access to the larger economy. They had been marginalized. When they arrived, they took the jobs, much the same way Mexicans have taken jobs in the garment industry in Los Angeles. In fact, my mother traveled — well, “traveled” is a big word — she hitchhiked from New York. I even have a picture of her stopping at Yosemite on the way to organize garment workers in Los Angeles. And she picketed the LA Times, where I ended up working for 29 years, trying to organize a union.
So yes, there was a lively, robust tradition of Jewish radicalism in New York. It frightened the German Jews who had moved heavily into banking and wealth and so forth. They were ashamed of the Eastern European Jews. It’s one reason they didn’t speak out clearly and strongly against what was happening in Germany. They still thought Germany was an enlightened country, and they basically betrayed the Jewish people. They didn’t want the refugees. They were not unhappy that they were turned away — even by Roosevelt.
But the Jewish story is typical of the Italian story, the Irish story. There was a guy named Quill.
[Side note: this refers to “Red” Mike Quill, whose obituary opens by stating that “Michael Quill forever changed labor relations in the USA.” Worth a read if you want to get inspired by labor work and the power of the people.]
Back to Bob:
Quill was the leader of the bus drivers — a famous Irish labor leader. Then Fiorello La Guardia, the legendary mayor of New York, was described in much more radical terms than the current newly installed mayor. And the most prominent person when I was growing up in New York — when I lived there from 1936 to the early ’60s — was Vito Marcantonio.
I rang doorbells for Vito Marcantonio when he ran for mayor. He was the legendary congressman from the Spanish Harlem area, and he was a pioneering figure in national politics, advancing progressive ideas. He was able to enter the primaries of the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, and the American Labor Party — his base — and win the Republican and Democratic primaries. As a kid, I remember how he unified Italians, Jews and everybody else around a progressive vision.
So it wasn’t just what The Guardian said about Jewish radicalism. There was Irish radicalism in the labor movement, and German radicalism too. Working class Germans — not rich people like Trump’s grandfather — were very active in the union movement nationally, but especially in New York. My father, a German Protestant immigrant, was a union shop steward in the New York knitting mills.
New York was this great melting pot of idealism. My mother could go to Town Hall and hear Scott Nearing debate Clarence Darrow on the question, “Is there meaning to life?” They had lectures, meetings, picketing. Fourteenth Street and Union Square were centers of soapbox oratory that rivaled anything in London — people giving speeches on vegetarianism, socialism, libertarianism, whatever. Those ideas later floated around the City College cafeteria when I was a student there — Ayn Rand and all that stuff.
It was a great area of fermentation of ideas: working-class perspective, respect for the common person. And that’s what Mamdani is all about. You’ve got a population drawn from the whole world — including the American South, Puerto Rico, everywhere — united around progressive idealism. And that’s what’s been revived here, with modernity.
In my own case, we didn’t have a refrigerator for well over a year — maybe two — because we were part of a rent strike. The landlord should have to buy you a new refrigerator instead of raising the rent. That was the fight. Who pays for a refrigerator? Who supplies heat in the tenements we were living in?
There was no begging rich people to bail anyone out. No. They put people on the City Council. When I was a kid, there were actually Communists — two, maybe three — like Peter Caccione. There was the American Labor Party. It was strong. The New York Post was quite progressive. There was a newspaper called PM. I.F. Stone wrote for it before he became nationally known. Jennings Perry was another.
New York City had a rich leftist tradition — one kind of socialism or another. Democratic socialism was common. People like Michael Harrington, who later became prominent writing about poverty, came out of that culture. You could go to Union Square, or anywhere — there were constant demonstrations, big May Day parades, everything.
So what you’re seeing now is a revival of the politics of the common person. They matter. The city should be for them. That’s why this is a historic moment.
This is Vito Marcantonio reborn.
So there it is.
Back to Josh:
So there it is, indeed. Now we need that kind of push across the United States, not just in New York, to show that we can build a world in which people’s labor and voices are respected and honored, not just taken as a given.
Happy New Year — and here’s to the fights ahead, whatever they may be, no matter how big or how small. You can make a difference.
Editor’s Note: At a moment when the once vaunted model of responsible journalism is overwhelmingly the play thing of self-serving billionaires and their corporate scribes, alternatives of integrity are desperately needed, and ScheerPost is one of them. Please support our independent journalism by contributing to our online donation platform, Network for Good, or send a check to our new PO Box. We can’t thank you enough, and promise to keep bringing you this kind of vital news.
You can also make a donation to our PayPal or subscribe to our Patreon.