NYC City Council Campaign: Campaign Manager Didn’t Say Manhattan Neighborhood Is Too White and Too Jewish

A spokesperson for a New York City Council campaign is claiming that contrary to news reports, their campaign manager never said that the Upper West Side of Manhattan is “too white and too Jewish.”

The New York Post reported Quinn Mootz, campaign manager for City Council candidate Sara Lind, tweeted on April 13 that the Upper West Side of Manhattan has a “diversity problem” because 68.4% of its population is white. She also wrote, “Jews are not POC [People of Color] for just being jewish. sorry.” Mootz, who is white and Jewish, previously worked for Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and the Progressive Turnout Project fundraising organization. The Post and Jewish Press claimed that Mootz had said that the Upper West Side was “too white and too Jewish.”

Steven Dzik, a resident in the Upper West Side, told the Post, “The Upper West Side is not simply predominately white. More than half the white people are Jewish. Jews have been a separate people for a millennia. To simply group Jews as white people comprising one undifferentiated homogenous group is bigoted and is engaging in simplistic stereotyping.”

A campaign spokesperson told the Journal that the Lind campaign has been “trolled by a couple of online groups,” who have issued rape and death threats against the Lind campaign; additionally, there was “an onslaught of racist tweets” after Lind had posted about the police shooting of Daunte Wright. Mootz had been responding to those tweets, which included a tweet about diversity in the Upper West Side and another tweet from a user saying that they were Jewish so they didn’t count as white. Mootz claimed “Jews are not POC for just being jewish” in response to the latter .

“You don’t get to call yourself POC just for being Jewish,” the campaign spokesperson added. “Of course, there’s people of color who are Jewish, and then there’s people who are white and also Jewish, and the people who are white and also Jewish — and this is part of an ongoing conversation — Quinn does not identify as ‘people of color’ because there’s a certain way that Jewish people who are white can move through the world that maybe a Black person or an Asian person or a Hispanic person can’t.”

The spokesperson alleged that The Jewish Press, which first broke the story, distorted Mootz’s tweets by claiming that she said that the Upper West Side was “too white and too Jewish,” when she actually said that the neighborhood was “majority white.” “It feels like a smear job from the right,” the spokesperson said, adding that Lind is raising her children as Jewish and Mootz and others on the campaign are Jewish. “Nobody on the campaign thinks the Upper West Side is ‘too Jewish.’ It’s ridiculous and libel.”

But Alexander Rosenberg, deputy regional director of Anti-Defamation League New York / New Jersey, didn’t buy the explanation. “Historically, Jews have been rejected from neighborhoods and universities and country clubs,” he told the Journal. “If what [the campaign] meant to say is that the neighborhood is not diverse enough, then that’s fine… but they were signaling privilege. They were saying, ‘white and Jewish equals privilege.’ And that’s the problem.”

The campaign spokesperson pointed the Journal to an April 19 announcement from The Jewish Vote, which is a project of Jews for Racial & Economic Justice Action (JFREJ), endorsing Lind and Gale Brewer, another NYC City Council candidate.

Rachel McCullough, political director of JFREJ, said in a statement that “right-wing” groups like the Upper West Side Together Facebook group — which the spokesperson claimed was responsible for the trolling and threats — “are resorting to cheap personal attacks all to avoid defending the indefensible: dehumanizing and displacing New Yorkers experiencing homelessness. We’re proud to support two candidates who truly see Jewish New Yorkers in all our diversity, not simply as fodder for political attacks, and have committed to partnering with us to move our city forward.”

Lind and Brewer said in a statement that they’re “thrilled” at the endorsement and that “we have no patience for bad-faith smears from special interest groups threatened by our shared vision for a city where everyone has what they need to thrive. We have no tolerance for hatred and bigotry and antisemitism. What we have is determination to build a safe and equitable New York City, and a mutual respect for each other’s plans to do so.”

On April 14, Lind tweeted that her campaign is moving off Twitter because “we’ve been trolled relentlessly with slurs, sexual assault & death threats, and anonymous cowards spreading misinformation. I will happily discuss our platform with anyone interested in having a conversation [in real life].”

Our campaign is officially off @Twitter. We've been trolled relentlessly with slurs, sexual assault & death threats, and anonymous cowards spreading misinformation. I will happily discuss our platform with anyone interested in having a conversation #IRL, saralind@saralind.nyc pic.twitter.com/Z3s0g8HdL8

— Sara Lind (@saraklind) April 14, 2021