I Heart Diversity (but NOT Diverse Tea)

by: Erica Brody

Wed Sep 15, 2010 at 10:11:18 AM EDT

Here at JFSJ,we've been keeping an eye on the Tea Party, as their leaders relentlessly fire off demagoguery to energize their followers around an anti-government, anti-tax approach that would leave millions more Americans without hope or a safety net. As today's post-primary headlines show, all that divisive hate-talk is adding up at the polls.

As if that's not scary enough, now they're targeting Jews with a new campaign called Diverse Tea.

Politico also has the story:

Tea party outreach courts Jews

Tea partiers have downplayed the lack of diversity in their ranks, but on Monday one of the movement’s leading organizers announced a new initiative to reach out to racial, ethnic and religious minorities — and the first target this High Holiday season are Jews.

“We do need to reach out,” said Matt Kibbe, president of the small-government group FreedomWorks, which this week is launching a minority outreach effort called DiverseTea with a series of print ads in Jewish community newspapers.

The ads, which will be accompanied by a yet-to-launch website, will showcase diversity in the tea party ranks by calling attention to movement leaders who are African-American, Hispanic and Jewish.

“The goal is to build a platform for a diverse group of tea party leaders from across the country — African-Americans, Jews, Hispanics, others that have come to this movement — because there is this nagging perception that we are not diverse, and I disagree with that,” said Kibbe during a Monday breakfast with reporters sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor.

Read the rest of the story here.

All the more reason to pledge your time to talking to voters about what's at stake in the 2010 elections!  

Fear and the Jewish Vote

by: Mik Moore

Wed Nov 26, 2008 at 13:18:09 PM EST

Those of you who are regular readers of jspot may have noticed that, for the past five months or so, I have not be blogging. For those of you who are not regular readers... well, you'll have to take my word on it.

My hiatus came about when I was given leave from Jewish Funds for Justice, started a political action committee with Ari Wallach called the Jewish Council for Education & Research (JCER), and threw myself into the task of increasing Barack Obama's support in the Jewish community. When I left JFSJ for JCER in July, Obama was polling at around 60% vs McCain among Jewish voters. On Election Day, Obama won 78% of the Jewish vote. There have been numerous explanations put forward to explain this dramatic shift; in this post, I'll share my thoughts on why the number started out so low (for us Jews, 60% is low for a Democratic candidate for President) and why it ended up so high.