Jewish Organization Backs Brewer, Lind For UWS City Council

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and fellow candidate Sara Lind were jointly endorsed Monday for the Upper West Side's City Council seat by The Jewish Vote, a political project from the grassroots organization Jews For Racial & Economic Justice (JFREJ).

The Jewish Vote endorsed both candidates as their shared first choice, instead of the more conventional decision to rank one above the other.

Brewer and Lind released a joint statement Monday in response to the endorsement.

“We are thrilled to be endorsed by JFREJ and The Jewish Vote, whose work we are inspired by and whose organizing achievements we greatly respect," Brewer and Lind said together in a news release. "We welcome this joint endorsement of both of our campaigns as we each work to earn the votes of our neighbors in District 6."

In the Jewish Vote's endorsement announcement of the two Upper West Side candidates, JFREJ's political director Rachel McCullough mentioned the Facebook group Upper West Side Together.

"Gale Brewer's and Sara Lind's enthusiastic acceptance of our dual endorsement demonstrates their commitment to putting the issues and the people of New York first," McCullough said in a news release. "It's one of the many reasons the Jewish Vote and JFREJ are throwing our support behind them. It's also the reason their detractors — right-wing NIMBY groups like Upper West Side Together — are resorting to cheap personal attacks all to avoid defending the indefensible: dehumanizing and displacing New Yorkers experiencing homelessness."

Upper West Side Together, originally named Upper West Side for Safer Streets, was created at the end of July when 283 homeless residents moved into the Lucerne Hotel. The page with over 15,000 members was used as a platform to share photos of the new UWS residents and vent frustration about the city's decision to use the neighborhood hotel as a temporary shelter.

The group eventually helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to hire an attorney to push the city to move residents out of The Lucerne.

This month, people on social media accused Lind's campaign manager of anti-Semitism after a volatile Twitter exchange that has since been deleted. The campaign disputed those claims.

"Our campaign manager happens to be Jewish. She finds these attacks to be very hurtful," Lind's campaign spokesperson Jordan Jayson told the NY Post.

"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," Brewer and Lind said in their joint statement on the Jewish Vote's endorsement. "We have no tolerance for hatred and bigotry and antisemitism."

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