Tali Cohen
I grew up in a Jewish home where civic engagement and standing up for others were central values. My grandfather helped desegregate the University of Georgia, and my great-grandfather was a labor organizer, representing the United States at the International Labor Organization. I was raised on stories of the civil rights movement and the labor movement — stories about courage, solidarity and the idea that progress comes from standing together, not dividing people into who belongs and who doesn’t.
Those lessons have stayed with me. But lately, I’ve found myself questioning whether the spaces I once trusted still reflect them.
Over the past year, I’ve grown increasingly uneasy about the role of the Metro DC Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) in our local civic life — not because of abstract political disagreements, but because of the way its actions and rhetoric are affecting Jewish families like mine.
After Oct. 7, many Jewish Americans were processing grief, fear and uncertainty. In that moment, I hoped to see empathy and care across communities. Instead, in some spaces influenced by DSA, I saw language and actions that seemed to draw hard lines about who belongs — and who doesn’t. And based on their rules, my family didn’t.
The organization in the last year led protests outside Jewish or Jewish-supporting institutions, including (inexplicably) the José Andrés restaurant Zaytinya, as part of demonstrations tied to “Nakba Day.” It supported campaigns like “Drop ADL,” targeting the leading anti-hate organization, which I work for, the Anti-Defamation League.
And in its candidate questionnaire this year for local elections including the mayoral race, it placed an outsized emphasis on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — devoting four questions and 13 subquestions to candidates’ views on this foreign policy concern, more than in sections on local issues like health care or racial justice.
This extremist shift by Metro DC DSA began even before Oct. 7. In 2022, it posted on X that “there is no place for Zionism…in progressive spaces.” It continued to veer into the extreme in 2024, passing a resolution stating that it is “unequivocally an anti-Zionist organization.” There is, of course, a diversity of views among Jews about Israel’s current government, its policies and the future of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But support for Israel’s right to exist remains a broadly held position in the Jewish community, with surveys consistently showing that upwards of 80% of American Jews support that basic principle.
Framing local political debates around Israel does not just make little sense in the context of city politics; it also follows a familiar and troubling playbook. Rather than attacking Jews directly, which would be more easily recognized and condemned, it targets a belief shared by the vast majority of the Jewish community and then uses that as a basis for exclusion. For many Jews, that feels less like an invitation to dialogue and more like a declaration about who does and does not belong.
At the same time, Metro DC DSA has called for cutting the Metropolitan Police Department’s budget by 50% and for defunding and abolishing the police. These positions land differently in a moment when Jewish communities are facing real threats. Across the country, synagogues have been attacked — from Jackson, Mississippi, to West Bloomfield, Michigan. Here in Washington, D.C., less than a year ago, two people were murdered outside the Capital Jewish Museum by an attacker who then reportedly shouted “Free, Free Palestine.” In the past five years, antisemitic incidents in the district have more than doubled. Every time I go to synagogue with my family, I breathe a sigh of relief when I see a police car outside, keeping me and my loved ones safe.
But there are now more DSA-endorsed candidates today than ever before in Washington, D.C.’s history. Taken together, these actions send signals about which identities are acceptable — and how seriously regarded the safety concerns of certain communities are.
For many Jewish families, including my own, that message lands in a deeply personal way. As a mother, I want my children to grow up in a community where they are physically safe and can participate fully in civic life — without feeling that part of their identity makes them unwelcome or should be hidden.
But more and more, I find myself asking a harder question: What happens if they don’t?
What happens if the places that claim to stand for inclusion are the very ones that make them feel unsafe? What happens if the message they receive — subtly or directly — is that being Jewish puts them outside the circle? What happens if there’s a ceiling on their potential because of who they are?
That’s what scares me. What does it mean to live in a world where great-grandparents had more freedom to make a difference in their communities than children today?
This is not disagreement. Not debate. It’s the quiet, steady narrowing of who belongs — and the possibility that my children will feel it.
Because when a community starts deciding who is allowed in, and who is not, it doesn’t just change politics.
It changes whether families like mine feel safe at all.
Tali Cohen is the regional director of ADL DC.
