Jamaal Bowman is an African American, former middle school principal, who appears to be headed to victory over the 16-term Democratic Congressmember Eliot Engel in Tuesday’s New York primary election.Â
His campaign is being compared to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s victory in a neighbouring New York congressional district two years ago.
Here’s what you need to know about Jamaal Bowman:
- Bowman supports a Green New Deal, Medicare for All and defunding the police.Â
- Growing up during the crack cocaine epidemic, Bowman was raised by a single mom and spent some time in the housing projects and lived in rent-stabilized apartments.
- In a campaign party, Bowman said: “And at a very young age as a Black man in America, you get to learn about death and homicide and suicide, and how it impacts not just you individually, but your community and the rest of the country.”
- Discussing poverty throughout America, he said: “as an educator working for the Department of Education for 20 years, I’ve seen the impact of poverty on the lives of our kids each and every day. And poverty is not a result of children and families who don’t work hard. Our children and families work as hard as anyone else. Poverty is by political design, and it’s rooted in a system that has been fractured and corrupt and rotten from its core from the inception of America, especially over the last several decades.
