Approximately 40 people, community activists and other guests gathered at the American Jewish Committee’s national headquarters in New York for a seminar on how a community approaches political activism and furthers its policy goals in the local, state and national arenas. The Oct. 29 event, ‘Making a Difference: Jewish Approaches to Political Advocacy,’ was sponsored by The American Jewish Committee (AJC), New York Chapter, The American Jewish Committee Belfer Center for American Pluralism, and The Indian American Center for Political Awareness (IACPA). The American Jewish Committee was founded in 1906 and its mission is to safeguard the welfare and security of Jews in the United States, in Israel and throughout the world. The Belfer Center for American Pluralism is a department of the AJC. The IACPA was founded in 1994 and is a nonprofit organization dedicated to serving the Indian-American community in the U.S., and its mission is to increase political awareness in the Indian-American community and encourage participation by community members in American democracy. At the seminar, Kapil Sharma, Washington Associate of IACPA, said Indian Americans have been wanting to emulate the Jewish model for political awareness, and while discussions between the two communities have been going on for some time in Washington, D.C., IACPA wanted to extend such meetings to New York as well. Following are excerpts from the presentations of Ralph Nurnberger, Washington Associate, IACPA; Richard Foltin, legislative director and counsel, AJC; Norman Stein, board of governors, AJC; and Ron Soloway, director of public affairs, UJA-Federation of New York.

Ralph Nurnberger,
Washington Associate, IACPA.

We are actually meeting at a rather interesting time in Israeli-Indian, Jewish-American and Indian-American relations. The relations between the Jewish-American and Indian-American communities have matured a great deal in the last 10 years, not just because of the center, but also because of international politics. There is an article in the Oct. 11 issue of Forward, which is one of the larger Jewish newspapers, which says that leaders of the two communities have been coming together in recent months to discuss hate crimes legislation and political activism. A major catalyst for cooperation is the perception that both communities face a common enemy in Muslim extremism.

But really, it is more than just Muslim extremism. It is the same basic issues that both face. Discrimination, hate crime legislation, immigration legislation, education policies, as well as so many social issues that are domestic in this country. That’s why there is a similarity. There is also a similarity because both communities are successful in the professional arenas of this country, in high-tech, in medicine, education. There are similarities on foreign policy, and even more so on domestic issues. As a result, people who don’t like us, tend not to like both communities. So, there are a lot of opportunities to work together. The Jewish community has a longer history of involvement politically because they have been here longer. Indian activism is a much more recent one. And there are examples and efforts to move forward.”

Richard Foltin,
Legislative Director and Counsel, AJC.

There are three things one has to know about how Washington, D.C., and our government operates. First, unlike most other democracies in the world, we have a separation of powers which means that there is a Congress and a President who are elected separately. And that has a lot to do with how we work to get our voices heard at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. (Second) One has to always maintain a bipartisan presence not only as a general matter, but within a specific administration or Congress. Also, we have a system in which our elected representatives in the legislative branch are elected by geographical locations. There are two Senators from each state, and then each state is also divided into Congressional districts.

This is important, because every American citizen, with the unfortunate exception of the District of Columbia, has a representative. Even if the representative is not a member of the same party, even if you did not vote for that person, that representative has an interest in dealing with the interests and concerns of the constituents. Another thing which distinguishes the Congress from any other elected legislature is the large staff that the members have individually and through the committees that Congress has. For us, who are trying to get our voices heard, maintaining contacts... with that staff, which has the first line of responsibility and makes recommendations to the members of Congress as to how they ought to vote and what positions they have to take, is a very crucial connection.

With regard to the constituency-based nature of our system, when there is a vote coming up, there is a particular action that is about to be taken where we want our voice to be particularly amplified, we send out action alerts, e-mails to our members and chapters all over the country. Another way we leverage our ability to reach out is to work in coalition with other communities that have a similar interest.

Ron Soloway,
Director, Public Affairs, UJA-Federation, N.Y.

From me, you will hear more of local perspective. The UJA-Federation has about 100 agencies under it. Every year, we go through a process of setting our priorities with the government. We reach out to our lay people, the people who give us money, we also reach out to our coalition partners, and check with them what are their concerns. Because... we cannot accomplish anything in Albany or New York City or the counties without working in collaboration with other people who care about the same issues that we do.

We call our strategy the grasstops-grassroot strategy. We mobilize our important donors, not only those who donate to the UJA directly, but also to the boards of our agencies, and we mobilize the small contributors and consumers of services of our agencies to effect or change programs for budget requests that we make to the government. One of the things that we need to survive is the basic amounts of money that the government has been providing. We have to sell this to Albany, the governor, legislature.

So we bring out our major donors... and we spend the day talking to all the leadership. At the same time, we organize our agencies to write letters, make phone calls and meet local elected officials... If you are having the people who are involved in political campaigns, or donors, having a conversation at this level... we will have the best chance of having our voice heard.

Norman Stein,
Board of Governors, AJC.

I grown up always being interested in politics, but I realized going into my late 20s that I never actually met an elected official. I was offered a position of law teacher in Little Rock, Arkansas. I met a very young governor, then 32, called Bill Clinton. A lot of my political experience really emanates from there. After my teaching in Little Rock, I returned to New York where I had grown up. In December 1991, I was called by an old friend who was Chief of Staff to Clinton. She told me that they had just begun Clinton’s presidential campaign. She handed me a pile of papers and asked me if I could talk to the Jews on behalf of the governor.

This is how I started my political activism. One of the things I did was to start on a national basis dealing with Jewish communities... talking about Clinton’s position on issues of concern to the community. It was a quiet learning experience for me. For instance, one of the places I visited represented most of the orthodox community. I realized that we had a lot of disagreements, like on public education, as they send their children to private religious-based schools, they were against abortion, etc. I assumed that at the end of the meeting, we would agree to disagree. But what I found was, when we talked about Clinton’s steadfast position in support of the freedom and security of the state of Israel, they essentially said to me that they have certain bottom line issues and that this was one of them. They said they would support Clinton. Then I realized that while there were certain issues that divide the Jewish community, there were also bottom line core issues that unite them. Another thing is we should be consistent on our issues even if the political climate changes. In short, keep to core issues, be bipartisan and have a wonderful staff.”

(Reported by Ganesh S. Lakshman)