Latest News: Posts Tagged ‘Bernie’s Brooklyn’

“[Captures] how the New Deal was actually lived at the ground level by Bernie’s generation” — BERNIE’S BROOKLYN featured in the Jewish Currents newsletter

Friday, April 16th, 2021

“…with significant investments in housing, education, and infrastructure that promised a more just and equitable social contract and made it possible for someone like Bernie, the son of a Jewish paint salesman from Poland, to benefit from upward mobility. It was precisely through the affordable education the New Deal state provided that Bernie became equipped to confront the racial and economic injustices that the New Deal either failed to alleviate or actively entrenched, and eventually was able to develop the critique that has inspired a new generation of leftists today.”

Read the full newsletter here.

“Favourite Reads in 2020” — BERNIE’S BROOKLYN recommended on the Repeater Books Blog

Monday, December 21st, 2020

“As well as a lively history of New York municipal politics and socialism in the New Deal era, this small book explores the lives of an ensemble cast of figures, from Arthur Miller to Eleanor Roosevelt to Woody Guthrie, and speculates on the impact of postwar Jewish Brooklyn on the future Vermont senator.”

See the full list here.

“AOC For NYC Mayor in 2021” — BERNIE’S BROOKLYN author Theodore Hamm writes for the Indypendent

Tuesday, December 1st, 2020

The charismatic congresswoman could be the transformative leader her hometown needs in a moment of crisis. In the process, she could strengthen her case for a future presidential run.

Read the article here.

“Brooklyn borough president candidate Robert Cornegy rails against ‘political gentrification’ by socialist upstarts while lining his coffers with campaign contributions from high-end real estate developers.” — BERNIE’S BROOKLYN author Theodore Hamm writes for the Indypendent

Tuesday, November 24th, 2020
For Brooklyn Real Estate Interests, Robert Cornegy Is a Premium Investment

Read the article here.

“Facebook Sued Over Kenosha Killings” — BERNIE’S BROOKLYN author Theodore Hamm writes for the Intercept

Friday, September 25th, 2020
“If Facebook won’t change their M.O., then a judge needs to tell them to enforce their own standards.”

Read the article here.

“The New York City Left Could Get a Chance to Define the Post-COVID City” — BERNIE’S BROOKLYN author Theodore Hamm writes for Jacobin

Friday, September 18th, 2020
With retail outlets and wealthy residents fleeing New York City, the battle over its post-COVID city has begun. Ahead of next year’s mayoral elections, socialists and their allies are battling developers and mobilizing for a municipal Green New Deal.

Read the article here.

“From Humble Beginnings to New York’s ‘Upper Echelons,’ Tali Weinstein Sets Her Sights On the Manhattan DA’s Office” — BERNIE’S BROOKLYN author Theodore Hamm interviews Tali Weinstein for the Indypendent

Friday, August 21st, 2020
Tali Weinstein immigrated to the United States from Iran as a young child in 1979. Her early law career included work as a clerk for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. During the Obama administration, she served as counsel to Attorney General Eric Holder.
Most recently, Weinstein served as counsel to Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez. She also teaches courses at NYU Law School including “Criminal Justice Reform and the District Attorney.”

Read the interview here.

“A Life-Long Fight For Justice Spurred Alvin Bragg Into the Manhattan DA Race” — BERNIE’S BROOKLYN author Theodore Hamm interviews Alvin Bragg for the Indypendent

Friday, August 14th, 2020
Alvin Bragg is a former chief deputy attorney general of New York. Born and raised in Harlem (where he still lives), Bragg is now co-director of the Racial Justice Project at New York Law School and a board member of the Legal Aid Society.

Along with co-counsel Gideon Oliver, Bragg is currently representing the families of Eric Garner and Ramarley Graham (as well as other criminal justice activists) in a lawsuit against the NYPD and de Blasio administration. The goal of the suit is to produce full transparency regarding the investigations conducted by the NYPD into Garner’s death.

Read the interview here.

“The Rise of Hakeem Jeffries Is Being Disrupted From Below” — BERNIE’S BROOKLYN author Theodore Hamm writes for the Intercept

Friday, August 14th, 2020
After Rep. Joyce Beatty’s primary in Ohio, Hakeem Jeffries was feeling good. Cori Bush and the New York insurgents snuck up on him.

Read the article here.

“How Brooklyn Turned Bernie Sanders Into a Democratic Socialist” — BERNIE’S BROOKLYN author Theodore Hamm interviewed on Scheer Intelligence

Friday, August 7th, 2020

“In Bernie’s Brooklyn, Political Revolution Was Mainstream” — BERNIE’S BROOKLYN excerpt published in Jacobin

Monday, July 20th, 2020
To many Americans, Bernie Sanders’s brand of socialism seemed to leap onto the national stage from out of nowhere. But in the postwar Jewish Brooklyn where he grew up, the socialist tradition and a veneration for the New Deal were central touchstones of mainstream politics.

Read the excerpt here.

NEW VIDEO: BERNIE’S BROOKLYN author Theodore Hamm interviewed on the Katie Halper Show

Monday, July 6th, 2020

“Bernie Sanders’s Socialism Is New York Born and Bred” — BERNIE’S BROOKLYN author Theodore Hamm interviewed by Public Seminar

Friday, June 26th, 2020

Ted Hamm, chair of journalism and new media studies at St. Joseph’s College is a historian of New York City. His latest book, Bernie’s Brooklyn: How Growing Up In the New Deal City Shaped Bernie Sanders’ Politics (OR Books, 2020) is not just for Sanders fans but for anyone interested in New York City politics. The book traces and untangles the dense political and cultural backdrop of New York City during the 1930s and 1940s when New York was on its way to becoming the most progressive city in the United States. With a cast of characters that include first lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Fiorello Laguardia, Robert Moses, Woody Guthrie, Jackie Robinson, and the Brooklyn Dodgers, Hamm describes the landscape where Bernie and his brother would come of age. Perhaps now more than ever, as the city struggles with a severe recession in the wake of the novel coronavirus, it is important that the roots of Sanders’s socialism be understood as the product of a particular place and time.

Read the interview here.

“How growing up in a New Deal city shaped Bernie Sanders’s vision for America” — BERNIE’S BROOKLYN excerpt published in Public Seminar

Friday, June 26th, 2020

It is always a surprise–and no surprise–that New York constantly reinvents its political and economic vision. Ted Hamm’s Bernie’s Brooklyn: How Growing Up in the New Deal City Shaped Bernie Sanders’ Politics (OR Books June 2020explores the thirty years of progressive politics that shaped Brooklyn and New York, decades that made Bernie Sanders the politician he is today.

Read the excerpt here.

“The World in Which Bernie Sanders Grew Up” — BERNIE’S BROOKLYN excerpt published on Lit Hub

Thursday, June 18th, 2020
Theodore Hamm on WWII-Era Brooklyn, the New Deal, and Commies Fightin’ Fascists

Read the full excerpt here.

“Heastie-Controlled Slush Fund Props Up Embattled NY State Assembly Incumbents” — BERNIE’S BROOKLYN author Theodore Hamm writes for the Indypendent

Thursday, June 18th, 2020
As the June 23 primary nears, money is flowing in multiple directions.
While candidates backed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders — including second-term Manhattan Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou and aspiring Brooklyn State Senator Jabari Brisport — have amassed hefty sums of small contributions, many long-term incumbents are relying on large transfers relayed by New York’s Democratic Party leadership.

The main account delivering five-figure sums to candidates is the Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee (DACC), which is controlled by Speaker Carl Heastie. As of last week’s 11-Day Pre-Primary filing, DACC had nearly $4 million to spend. In the first two days of this week, nearly $100,000 has poured into its coffers.

Read the full article here.

“Media-Darling Cop Terence Monahan’s Legacy of Brutality” — BERNIE’S BROOKLYN author Theodore Hamm writes for the Indypendent

Tuesday, June 9th, 2020
He took a knee on Monday night at Union Square protests, garnering the effusive praise of Mayor Bill de Blasio. But on Thursday night, he quite literally looked the other way when cops started roughing up protesters in the Bronx.In between, Chief of Department Terence Monahan — the NYPD’s highest-ranked uniform officer — appeared on the network-TV morning shows and with CNN’s Chris Cuomo, whose “Big Brother” apologized to Monahan for criticizing the department’s handling of looting earlier in the week.

Relatively unknown outside of police circles until now, Monahan is suddenly in the spotlight. Yet throughout his nearly four-decade career with the NYPD, Monahan has been a leading practitioner of both broken-windows policing and crackdowns on protests, two of the main issues that enrage many activists on the streets today.

Read the full article here.

“Frank Sinatra, Woody Guthrie, Arthur Miller & the Reds on the Brooklyn Waterfront” — BERNIE’S BROOKLYN excerpt published in the Indypendent

Friday, June 5th, 2020
New York City during the 1930s and 1940s saw a unique array of political alliances. Although FDR was a Democrat, he was not connected to the party’s two leading machines in the city, Tammany Hall in Manhattan and its counterpart in Brooklyn. Meanwhile, FDR’s close ally Fiorello La Guardia was a liberal Republican.

La Guardia (aka the “Little Flower”) was also closely linked to leftist Congressman Vito Marcantonio and the garment union-driven American Labor Party (ALP), which had strong ties to the Communist Party (CPUSA). Here’s a sampling of how these connections played out just after the war, with Woody Guthrie, then living on Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island, as our point of entry.

Read the full excerpt here.

“Albany County District Attorney David Soares, once a promising criminal justice reformer, faces primary challenge from the left” — BERNIE’S BROOKLYN author Theodore Hamm writes for the Intercept

Monday, June 1st, 2020

UNTIL 2018, New York was behind the curve in terms of criminal justice reform. But spurred by grassroots activists, that year the state legislature surged to the forefront, creating a prosecutorial misconduct commission and initiating debate over the landmark bail reforms passed in early 2019.

The commission was later deemed unconstitutional (because of how its members would be chosen), and the bail reforms were scaled back earlier this year. One of the most vocal opponents of the new measures was Albany County District Attorney David Soares, who served as head of District Attorneys Association of New York, or DAASNY, from 2018 to 2019.

Now, Soares has a target on his back. First elected in 2004 as a promising criminal justice reformer who campaigned on opposition to the Rockefeller Drug Laws, Soares is now being challenged from the left by Albany defense attorney Matt Toporowski, a former prosecutor in Soares’s office.

Read the full article here.

“Far from being totally alien to the American way, the sort of socialism Bernie advocates was commonplace where he grew up” — BERNIE’S BROOKLYN excerpt published on ScheerPost

Monday, May 25th, 2020

Read the full excerpt here.

“We Can’t Lose the Right to Protest in the Age of Coronavirus” — BERNIE’S BROOKLYN author Theodore Hamm writes for Jacobin

Wednesday, May 13th, 2020
Concerns about the spread of coronavirus are legitimate, but the right to public protest must be upheld through the crisis. Unfortunately, New York City mayor Bill de Blasio has done the opposite, eroding our rights to assembly during the pandemic.

Read the full piece here.

“Bernie Sanders owes more to Brooklyn than his accent. His politics were profoundly shaped by its radicalism—from New Deal reforms to the Yiddish socialism that brought his grandparents into active politics.” — BERNIE’S BROOKLYN excerpt published in Tribune

Thursday, April 9th, 2020

Bernie’s Brooklyn

The contempt for Bernie’s democratic socialist vision during the Democratic primaries was an illustration of just how far the party has moved from Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal. Like many key figures in his administration, Roosevelt was a Keynesian capitalist, not a socialist. Neither were the coterie of middle-class reformers FDR brought to Washington from New York City’s settlement house movement of the Progressive Era. But the New Deal’s policies were not simply the handiwork of far-sighted technocrats. Instead, FDR’s team responded to pressure exerted from below. 

The Great Depression had spawned both labour militance, leading to a strike wave that shut down the West Coast waterfront in 1934; and social movements, including the retirement pension campaign led by Dr. Francis Townsend that had launched a year earlier. In 1935, both efforts helped create two of the New Deal’s most enduring legacies: the right for unions to organise and strike (as stipulated by the Wagner Act) and the Social Security system. 

Yet when FDR and prominent allies such as New York City mayor Fiorello La Guardia spoke of the president’s “social security programme,” the lowercase term referred to far more than simply pensions. As FDR outlined in his “Economic Bill of Rights” and other speeches, he viewed it as the federal government’s responsibility to provide jobs, health care, and secure housing for the American people. Rather than democratic socialism, FDR created a blueprint for social democracy akin to what exists in many European countries today.

Many fundamental elements of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 agenda — including free college tuition, rent control and massive federal investment in housing, and vast public works projects that provide public-sector jobs (now the Green New Deal) — were realities in the Brooklyn where he grew up.

Read the full excerpt here.

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