Interview by Jacobin

Last summer, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez pulled off a stunning upset over Congressman Joe Crowley of New York. Crowley was a longtime stalwart of the Democratic Party establishment and member of the New Democratic Coalition, a caucus of centrist Democrats affiliated with the neoliberal Democratic Leadership Council.

In 2020, another longtime “New Democrat” is facing a primary challenge in New York: Representative Eliot Engel of New York’s 16th congressional district in the Bronx and southern Westchester County. Engel is being challenged by Jamaal Bowman, an education justice advocate and Bronx middle school principal.

Bowman has spent in his career in New York’s public schools where he participated in organizing against austerity budgets by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor Andrew Cuomo. He has also been in a leader in the opt-out movement against the overuse of standardized testing. And now he’s being backed by Justice Democrats, the same organization that recruited and helped elect Ocasio-Cortez.

Engel, on the other hand, is most known for being one of the most hawkish Democrats. He infamously voted for the Iraq War, against the Iranian nuclear deal, and attempted to stall growing movement in Congress to end the United States’ support for the war in Yemen. Engel has also received donations from the corporate PACs of weapons manufacturers like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, and Boeing.

We talked to Bowman to get a sense of the type of change he’d like to see in Washington, and whether he represents a real break with mainstream Democratic politics.