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Why Jewish teens aren’t speaking out about the NYC mayoral election, despite their strong feelings
This article was produced as part of the New York Jewish Week’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around New York City to report on issues that affect their lives.
As a teen reporter I work hard to amplify the voices of young people on issues that affect them. That’s why I was excited about my assignment from the New York Jewish Week to gather teens’ reactions to the upcoming New York City mayoral election. While many of these teens aren’t old enough to vote, I hoped to present a range of opinions from young people who care about their city and its future.
But when I started to report on the issue, I kept hitting the same wall: None of the teens I tried to interview would go on the record with their names or their political beliefs. All eight said they didn’t want that type of exposure in such a politically divisive time.
The teens I met aren’t the only ones who feel this way, and it isn’t just the mayoral election that’s keeping young adults quiet. According to Education Week, “young people are reluctant to discuss politics, especially without a space to safely navigate those discussions in such a polarized environment.” The article found that teens often worry that if they speak up in school, their voices will be dismissed, criticized or misunderstood. A lack of confidence could play a role, too: A 2023 study by CIRCLE, Tufts University’s research organization focused on youth civic engagement, found that only 40% of students feel “well-qualified” to participate in political conversations.
Nonetheless, in private conversations, the New York City teens I talked with shared fascinating insights about the mayoral race. The discussions broadly fell into two camps: Teens felt conflicted over the morality and beliefs of the candidates, and they also feared that if they said the wrong thing, their opinions would follow them for the rest of their lives.
Zohran Mamdani, the frontrunner, is a progressive and a staunch critic of Israel who won the Democratic nomination. His closest challenger, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, is seeking a political comeback after resigning as governor in 2021 amid a barrage of sexual harassment allegations. Trailing the pack is Republican Curtis Sliwa, the red beret-wearing founder and CEO of the Guardian Angels.
To Jewish teens, none of these candidates seem suitable to run their beloved city — something my sources were eager to express, albeit anonymously.
“On the one hand, it feels morally wrong to consider electing Andrew Cuomo, given the numerous allegation of sexual harassment. As a woman, I believe elected officials should embody the values of respect and integrity,” one Jewish teen living on the Upper West Side told me. “On the other hand, while Zohran Mamdani’s policies often sound compelling, in theory, I consistently find myself questioning what a sharply critical view of Israel might mean for a city with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel.”
Another Upper West Side teen, a senior at a private high school, echoed a similar sentiment: “This election has been so frustrating because it feels like I have to give up one set of values to protect another.”
The teens I spoke to had strong beliefs. Why had they declined to attach their names to their statements?
Well, according to a junior at a Manhattan public high school, “although I am not yet old enough to vote, I’ve found this mayoral race both confusing and frustrating. I don’t want my name attached to either one of these candidates.”
“I do not want my name to be linked to a political figure,” explained one Upper East Side teen, “because it can follow me into the future and change how others automatically view me when they meet me for the first time.”
This last quote, in particular, touched a nerve with me, as it highlights just how aware teens are of growing up in a society that increasingly lives online. Teens applying for colleges and thinking about their future career path start thinking at a young age. The last thing we want is for a future employer to find — and disagree with — something we said about a politician when we were 16.
As a teen reporter, my job is to give teens an opportunity to be seen and heard. My editor, who has worked with teen journalists for over 30 years, told me that she’s seen more and more young sources ask for anonymity over the past five years. As our lives become inextricably tied to the internet, it’s easy to see why: Doxxing — the malicious release of private information — has become a “mainstream public safety concern,” according to Safe Home, which conducts yearly research on doxxing. According to their report, 57% of Americans say they avoid sharing political views online out of fear of being targeted.
Doxxing over perspectives related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been common in recent years, with both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian voices experiencing the practice.
So as a 17-year-old who is constantly on social media and always with my friends, I understand why my peers are worried about sharing too much. But this also means my role as a reporter who focuses on teen issues has become significantly more difficult. I worry that as the city becomes more polarized by politics, teens and young adults will feel less and less comfortable sharing their views and, as a result, news articles can’t reflect the community fully and policies can’t be responsive to young people’s needs. When that happens, we all lose.
Compounding the reluctance of young people to speak publicly about politics is the hesitancy of politicians and media to seek their opinions. Meira Levinson, a professor of education and society at Harvard University, writes about the “civic empowerment gap.” She describes how young people, especially those still in school, are often encouraged to care about politics but are rarely given the opportunity to express their views in a meaningful way. Candidates almost never make the effort to integrate teen concerns into their campaign.
Our communal politics need to create a safe space for young people to share their opinions. And candidates should solicit teens’ views if they want to make New York City a safe and inclusive city for all.
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Nearly half of young Americans view US relationship with Israel as a burden, survey finds
(JTA) — Nearly half of young Americans, 46%, believe that the United States’ relationship with Israel is mostly a burden to the United States, according to a new survey from the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School.
The Harvard Youth Poll, which polled 2,018 Americans aged 18 to 29, found that just 16% of those surveyed described the U.S. relationship with Israel as mostly a benefit.
Respondents were asked about their view of other U.S. alliances, including Canada, which 53% saw as beneficial, and Ukraine, which 21% saw as beneficial. Israel received the lowest perceived benefit of any country tested.
The survey also found that 55% of young Americans believe the U.S. military action in Iran is not in the best interest of the American people.
It comes as attitudes about Israel among young Americans in recent years have grown sharply negative. Earlier this month, a Pew Research Center survey found that 70% of Americans aged 18 to 49 held a somewhat or very negative opinion of Israel. That view was split among partisan lines, with 84% of Democrats in that demographic holding a negative view of Israel, compared to 57% of Republicans.
The Harvard survey was conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs between March 26 and April 3 and had a margin of error of 2.74 percentage points.
The post Nearly half of young Americans view US relationship with Israel as a burden, survey finds appeared first on The Forward.
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Long Island father and teen son arrested after investigation into swastika drawn in school bathroom
(JTA) — A father and his teenage son were arrested Wednesday after an investigation into swastika graffiti at the teen’s school led police to search their home, where authorities said they found chemicals used to make explosives.
The arrests stemmed from an investigation into swastika graffiti found in a boys’ bathroom at Syosset High School on Long Island. After police determined that a 15-year-old student had drawn the swastika, the Nassau County Police Department sent officers to his home.
There, the teen told the officers about the explosive materials, according to prosecutors. He said his father had purchased the chemicals for him to build rockets.
During the subsequent search of the home, police found “highly unstable” materials that had been combined to make explosives, including nitroglycerin, multiple acids, oxidizers and fuels. They began to evacuate people in adjacent homes, fearing an explosion.
The teen was not identified by police due to his age. Francisco Sanles, 48, who was arrested at the scene, has pleaded not guilty to seven criminal counts, including criminal possession of a weapon and endangering the welfare of a child. His son was charged with five counts, including criminal possession of a weapon, criminal mischief, aggravated harassment and making graffiti.
Swastika graffiti is relatively commonplace in schools, with the Anti-Defamation League reporting over 400 incidents in 2024: Syosset High School itself was hit by a spate of antisemitic graffiti, including swastikas, in 2017. But it is relatively rare that incidents result in arrests.
In an email to the school district Wednesday night, the Syosset School District — which enrolls a large number of Jewish students — said its investigation had identified the student for the police, and he would face “serious consequences pursuant to the District’s Code of Conduct.”
“Antisemitism and hate speech have no place in our communities or in our schools,” the district said. “Syosset has long been proud of being a welcoming, empathetic, and inclusive community and those values remain firm. We protect those values and this community by confronting and holding accountable those who traffic in any form of hate.”
In January, New York City Police arrested and charged two 15-year-old boys suspected of spraying dozens of swastikas on a playground in a heavily Jewish Brooklyn neighborhood with aggravated harassment and criminal mischief as a hate crime.
The post Long Island father and teen son arrested after investigation into swastika drawn in school bathroom appeared first on The Forward.
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Tucker Carlson calls campaign to shame a country club for barring a Jewish toddler ‘repulsive’
(JTA) — Catherine Rampell, the economist and pundit, likes telling the story about how her father once launched a public campaign against a Palm Beach country club when it banned his 4-year-old son from attending a birthday party because he is Jewish.
Now, Tucker Carlson has turned the anecdote into a sinister and “repulsive” tale of a crusade against folks who just want to hang out together.
Carlson substantially misrepresented Rampell’s anecdote, turning it into what Rampell on Wednesday said was “a coded story in defense of antisemitic and racist country clubs.”
Carlson, the far-right firebrand who sits at the center of the Republican Party’s schism over antisemitism, on Tuesday interviewed his brother Buckley on his streaming show about their shared disaffection for President Donald Trump over launching the Iran war. Tucker Carlson was until recently close to Trump, and Buckley Carlson was a speechwriter for the president.
The brothers in the podcast discussed Trump’s purported distaste for WASPs, shorthand for White Anglo Saxon Protestants who are descended from immigrants who arrived in the Americas in the 17th and 18th centuries. Trump’s grandfather was German-born, and his mother was Scottish.
“He’s very fixated on the WASP thing, and does talk about it a lot,” Tucker Carlson said.
“There’s another group in America that’s kind of fixated on the WASPs too,” his brother responded.
“I’ve noticed that,” Tucker said. And his brother continued: “With equal fervor and hostility.”
That led into a discussion of “status anxiety” driving social change, which Tucker Carlson says “everyone lies about.” That’s when Carlson recalled meeting Rampell at Fox News about a decade ago, when he was a host at the network and she was a guest commentator.
Referring to Rampell, who graduated with honors from Princeton University and who was then about 30, as a “girl” and a “liberal neocon person” who was “not smart,” he recalled asking her about her upbringing. She told him she grew up in Palm Beach, the wealthy Florida enclave where Carlson has also spent a lot of time.
“And she’s like, ‘Yeah, we moved there, and my dad sued the Bath and Tennis club for discrimination because they wouldn’t let him in,’” Tucker Carlson recounted.
“Like, that’s repulsive to me,” he continued. “A club should have, you should have the right to hang out with whoever you want to hang out, on whatever basis you want to make that decision. She was, like, bragging about it, and I was like, the hatred behind that, the desire to destroy something is so evident. This girl’s a hater.”
Rampell, who scould only vaguely recall the encounter, set the record straight on Wednesday on the Bulwark podcast. Rampell works for the Bulwark, a centrist political outlet, as well as for the liberal cable news channel MSNOW.
“My father didn’t sue country clubs,” she said. “Tucker is actually right that freedom of association is allowed under the law.”
Instead, Rampell’s father, Richard, a CPA, was moved in 1990 to launch a publicity campaign against clubs in the area that excluded on the basis of race, religion or gender, after his toddler son was told he would not be invited to a preschool classmate’s birthday party.
“We learned this, or my family learned this, because my brother was in preschool at the time, and he was not invited to a birthday party, and was subsequently found out that the reason he was not invited is that the country club that Tucker is referring to, the Bath and Tennis club, did not allow Jews in its doors, even 4-year-old Jews, as it turns out,” Rampell said.
“When your own child becomes a victim, it awakens emotions you never knew you had,” Richard Rampell told the Palm Beach Daily News on May 16, 1993.
Carlson did not say “Jews” when he discussed the topic on his livestream. But Rampell said she detected plenty of codes, including his exchange with his brother about a group “fixated” on WASPs, and the ostensible oxymoron he uses to describe Rampell a “liberal neocon.”
“You’ll understand what that’s a euphemism for,” Rampell said.
“Neoconservative” or “neocon” are sometimes used as anti-Jewish pejoratives, on the left and the right. Rampell’s writing and commentary do not reflect the views of actual neoconservatives, who champion shrinking the welfare state as well as a robustly interventionist foreign policy.
Rampell noted that Carlson is no stranger to euphemisms for Jews, recalling that in his eulogy for the slain conservative leader Charlie Kirk last year, Tucker referred to the killers of Jesus as “a bunch of guys sitting around eating hummus.”
Trump in 1993 sought assistance in turning the Palm Beach estate he had purchased, Mar-a-Lago, into a country club. One lawyer he consulted with advised Trump to emphasize that the new club would be open to all comers – it would not restrict Jews or Blacks or others.
“You’ve got an island with a lot of Jewish residents who have no club to go to,” said the lawyer, Paul Rampell — Catherine’s uncle, and her father’s partner in campaigning against country club bigotry.
Trump agreed and hired the lawyer, who helped him secure permission to launch the club.
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