J. Pharoah Doss: Rep. Jamaal Bowman faced the firing squad

Politics is the art of compromise. Activists, on the other hand, are uncompromising. What happens when an activist wins a seat in Congress but decides to stay an activist rather than become a politician? They do not survive long. In 2020, the Justice Democrats recruited Jamaal Bowman, a 44-year-old Black man and former middle school principal who self-identified as a democratic-socialist, to run for Congress in New York’s 16th district against a 16-term incumbent whom the Justice Democrats viewed as disconnected from working-class issues. The Justice Democrats, a progressive political action organization and caucus created in 2017, seeks to elect a “new type of democratic majority” to Congress. In 2018, the Justice Democrats fielded 79 progressive candidates in local, state, and federal elections, winning seven congressional seats. Four of the seven winners were Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib, who became known as the “squad.” Bowman had never held public office before, but he established a reputation as a charismatic grassroots activist who concentrated on issues that disproportionately impacted poor students of color. Bowman’s defeat of the 16-term incumbent was an upset victory for the Democratic Party’s progressive wing. Bowman did not defeat the incumbent on...