I am a Jew.

Do you know what that means?

Or what antisemitism actually is?

Or how it actually works?

The answer is probably no.

So why are you so sure antisemitism isn’t a major problem in Israel-Palestine discourse in the left?

It is & it must be addressed. 🧵

1/x I wear a kippah in public, which means I’m an easily identifiable Jew and I’m an antisemitism educator. I’m also a progressive organizer.

As I’ve organized across the country, I’ve often ended up in conversations about antisemitism (and Israel and Palestine).

2/x

On Tuesday, Rand Paul said Bragg should be arrested IF he indicts Trump.

Not to be outdone, on Wednesday, MTG said he should be arrested just for investigating Trump.

Cultist authoritarianism isn’t a bug, it’s a core feature of those in control of the @GOP.

A short 🧵…

1/ Remember, these aren’t just random tweets. This rhetoric and these tactics are right out of the authoritarian playbook, used for centuries to get and consolidate power.

2/

https://twitter.com/oren_jacobson/status/1638350711149981696

Rand Paul called for Alvin Bragg to be thrown in jail if he indicts Trump.

This isn’t just a random tweet & @GOP attacks on Bragg aren’t just normal partisan politics.

It’s all part of the party’s slide toward authoritarianism…

A short 🧵…

1/ Successfully enabling a
non-military autocratic takeover requires 3 things:

You alter electoral rules to limit the ability of the opposition to win (voter suppression).

You weaken or silence dissent (change libel laws, press = enemy of the people, jail journalists).

2/

A short 🧵on why the @GOP will continue to pursue authoritarian strategies in America:

The @GOP, as constructed, can’t fire up its base & expand the appeal of the party at the same time.

Why? The biggest driver of base turnout for them is an ethnic nationalist culture war.

1/ This nationalist appeal requires defining the rest of us as an existential threat & enemy of “real America.”

And, the structure of our political system allows the GOP to gain a lot of power w/o popular support IF their base votes.

But, by defining those who don’t agree…

2/

Two things on #antisemitism that I haven’t seen mentioned around the #Kanye discussion that are important.

A 🧵on why antisemitism, at times, may be taken less seriously today by some in America, helping it spread further/faster, creating more fear for Jews & risk for all.

1/ 1st: In the US (& the west broadly), Jews are mostly (inaccurately) perceived as a white religious group. This reduces our identity significantly in order to fit into western identity constructs & ultimately maps Jewish identity onto the contours of America’s racial divide.

2/

For the pro-choice men out there ready to step up, a 🧵:

7 years ago I helped launch & now serve as Co-ED of @Men_4_Choice, the only org in America (to our knowledge) focused exclusively on activating, educating, mobilizing male allies in the fight for reproductive freedom. I know many of you aren’t sure what to do & don’t want to make mistakes. I get it. I’ve screwed up & will again.

But, an imperfect ally is much better than a silent bystander.

Here’s guidance for how to approach this & action steps in no particular order.

Many of my progressive friends have reached out privately about the @sunrisemvmt DC chapter statement. “Is that antisemitic,” they asked?

Here’s what I told them...

A THREAD First, you need to understand what it means to be a Jew. Judaism is the shared religion of the Jewish people. Some of us are deeply religious. Some of us are totally secular. All of us are Jews. We’re a people, not simply a religious community.

It’s now illegal to pass out food & water to voters waiting in line in Georgia.

Apparently feeding people made to wait hours to vote undermines our elections.

Who is coming to GA w/ me in 2022 to break this law??? Hopefully @marceelias gets this overturned in court. But damn they’re not even trying to hide their intention anymore.

Republican Senators must demand Trump's resignation tonight - THREAD:

The President of the United States stoked this with outright, verifiable lies. This is the logical conclusion of a months long, intentional effort to undermine faith in our elections.

1/ @GOP elected officials, most of whom know better, went along every step of the way. It's time for them to put country over party. Like at the end of Watergate, the majority of Republican Senators must now go to the White House and tell the President to resign.

2/

A Thread on the @USJewishDems Ad Controversy:

Yesterday, JDCA released the ad below, drawing comparisons btw the rise of fascism (and Nazi's) in 1930's Europe to now. This led to calls from several prominent Jewish orgs to pull the ad down.

1/

https://twitter.com/i/status/1310977301342023680

There is a (smart) widely held belief (unwritten rule) that Nazi comparisons in our politics should largely be avoided. At the core, the concern is that we desensitize the public and minimize the full horror of what the Nazi's did. Some, went so far as to argue it insulted...

2/

Thread on right-wing twisting of CDC #COVID19 data:

Over the weekend, right-wing skeptics have jumped on CDC data exploring deaths from the virus. Specifically, they’ve started arguing just 10k deaths have come from covid.

1/ How the does this happen? Simple, people are using data on co-morbidities to twist the data. What is a co-morbidity? Think of it like an underlying health risk factor. So, a 50 year old man with a heart condition who dies from Covid has a co-morbidity around that condition.

2/

A thread on Trump, Covid, & 2020:

@realDonaldTrump may lose in 2020 explicitly because of how he has managed #COVID19. The irony is that if he managed this well, he’d likely be very hard to beat. You’re kidding yourself if you don’t see that.

1/ This last week, though, Trump may have doomed his fate. Why? His convention & the subsequent rallies once again give his followers permission to act as if all is normal.

Meanwhile, 40-50k people/day are still testing positive. That means the virus is still very widespread.

2/

The CEO of .@GuaranteedRate is going after .@KimFoxxforSA. Will the @whitesox stay silent knowing their stadium is named after his company? The first Black woman in this office has been relentlessly attacked, mostly by powerful white men. Do #BlackLivesMatter, Sox? Are the .@whitesox committed to reforming the most racist systems in America? Or will they blame Black Americans for the results of 400 years of systemic oppression? Does @GuaranteedRate CEO even know the data on prosecution under @KimFoxxforSA? Or just another rich guy with...

There are a lot of states guilty of human rights violations. That’s true in the Middle East and throughout the world. If your only (or disproportionate) focus is on the world’s only Jewish state, and you largely ignore the rest, people are rightfully going to question if...

1/ Antisemitism is at play. None of that is to dismiss/deny the injustice present. But, for a movement so focused on tackling implicit bias in society, some progressives are blind to the anti-Jewish bias within our ranks. Want to ask candidates not to travel to and/or support...

2/

A Thread On #VoterFraud Based On Empircal Research:

1. Bc it’s illegal, it’s prosecuted.

2. Bc it’s prosecuted, we have data on # of charges & convictions.

3. Bc we also have vote totals we can establish a fact based percentage of votes that are fraudulent.

1/ 4. Bc we have vote totals broken down by voting district, we can see where the impact of laws passed to “stop voter fraud” occur.

5. And, we can see when/where these laws are passed and what the common threads are.

2/

Thread exploring #COVID19 numbers and trends:

I went back to March 3rd (when we hit 100) cases, and tracked growth rate for every day since then. The range from 3/3 through 3/23 was 1.21x to 1.51x, with an average of 1.34x.

medium.com/@ojacobson34/a…

1/ Yesterday, 3/24, we saw a daily reported positive test growth rate of 1.19x, the lowest we've had. That's good. We now have 55.2k known positive tests as of this morning.

2/

THREAD: By the end of this upcoming week America will have the most cases #COVID19 on earth. By far. Today, that’s China. By next Sunday, it will be us.

And the consequences of #Trumps lying, dismissing, and failure to prepare America for two months will be laid bare.

1/ Let me explain the math first. We were at 5k on the 16th. 8k on the 18th. 19k on Friday. By the time we went to bed last night on Saturday we were over 27k (using Bing’s tracker).

Simplest way to think about this is that we're essentially doubling cases every 2-3 days. 2/

1.) @Rush4Congress thinks the massive, national attack and rollback of reproductive rights is a distraction. Few things impact working families more than the incredibly consequential decision of whether or if to have children.

https://twitter.com/Rush4Congress/status/1216085129556381697

2.) Apparently Rush thinks women wanting control of their bodies/lives is corrupting a special interest. That fighting for the people requires breaking free of these corrupting forces - which represent in this case >50% of the electorate and a population without systemic power.

THREAD: I could argue that none of previous GOP #TaxScams helped average Americans but a.) we already know that and b.) if you're a #RedHat you're going to call that #FakeNews. Instead, I want to share what else could we do with $1.5T instead besides give it to the rich? 1/ With $1.5T we could pay off all student debt. Every. Last. Dollar.