Timestamp: 01 December 2022 @ 1019 Pacific
The S.F.-based Jewish Community Relations Council has launched an initiative to support Jewish elected officials across the Bay Area, from city council representatives to school board members. BANJO, the Bay Area Network of Jewish Officials, aims to "empower" Jewish office holders and support them on issues of common concern.
"Many [elected officials] expressed to us that they felt isolated as Jewish leaders on their councils or on their school boards," JCRC CEO Tye Gregory said. "We thought this would be a great way to solve a lot of those problems."
The program, which has been in the works for over a year, was done in collaboration with local leaders who were looking for more support from JCRC on policy concerns, conversations surrounding Israel and issues of antisemitism in their communities, according to Gregory. Other associations of elected leaders, including the California Legislative Jewish Caucus in Sacramento, inspired the new program, he said.
Among other benefits, Gregory said, he hopes BANJO will help officials feel comfortable being openly Jewish.
"If our most visible leaders aren't self-identifying as Jewish and talking about their experiences as Jews, who is?" he said. "We thought it was really important to empower them by giving them access to us and to a network of peers in an unprecedented way."
BANJO has more than 50 members and has been meeting informally for a year, Gregory said. Members came together for the program's first official conference on Nov. 18.
With the program's launch, the JCRC announced the selection of three regional chairs. Belmont Mayor Julia Mates will represent the Peninsula, San Rafael Vice Mayor Rachel Kertz will cover the North Bay, and El Cerrito City Council member Tessa Rudnick will represent the East Bay.
Mates became Belmont's first directly elected mayor in November; previously council members rotated into the job. She had already served a year as mayor and four years as a council member, and was part of early discussions with JCRC that led to the creation of BANJO.
"We realized that many of our colleagues had the same issues. It is unique to be a Jewish elected," Mates said. "Sometimes when you go to different political official organizations, there's not a great space for Jewish officials to mingle and talk about some of the common issues. So having a specific place for Jewish elected officials is very valuable."
The regional leaders will act as a point of contact between the JCRC and local members, Kertz said. She has served as a San Rafael council member for two years, and vice mayor for one year. Her term will end in January.
Kertz and members of the North Bay BANJO have already met with Marin County District Attorney Lori Frugoli to discuss antisemitic flyers that appeared in several towns across the county this year, believed to be the act of the hate group Goyim Defense League. AB 2282, which equalizes penalties for the use of hate symbols such as swastikas and burning crosses and others, came out of efforts that began in Marin, Kertz said. The measure was authored by East Bay Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan and signed into law in September.
Moving forward, Kertz hopes BANJO will help to address the issue of school districts overlooking Jewish holidays, as well as other issues surrounding public policy.
"Even though we're all Jewish and we're all elected, we don't always have the same opinion," Kertz said. "But [BANJO] opens up the conversation # in a safe place where we can collaborate, we can support one another, we can be there for one another."
Keywords: Humboldt California US Ziosphere mobbing bullying herding nebbishes
Source: https://jweekly.com/2022/11/30/bay-area-jewish-elected-officials-find-common-cause-as-banjo/
Comment: We think these people were elected and appointed by their various electorates to represent the electorate, not the local Jewish community, the national Jewish community, or Israel.
By clotting together like this these self-described 'Jews' only reveal their inability to stand on their own two feet and their desperate need for a herd of people like themselves to summon forth, to harass anyone who questions them, with phone calls and emails questioning whether their opposition means that, really, maybe, they are secretly anti-Semitic.
After much meditation we have realized that people who call themselves 'Jewish' define themselves as such in relation to a huge network of people who also define themselves as 'Jewish', and that if you are Jewish but you are not connected to this network then, as far as most of these self-described 'Jewish' people are concerned, you are nobody.
Thus we see that being Jewish is a network-centric phenomenon and without the network there can be no Jewishness. It is the network that makes one 'Jewish' - one's connection - not to a center of holiness, no, nothing like that ... it is about one's connection to Jewish Power.
Gilad Atzmon is a good example of a Jew who has been disconnected from Jewish Power. His bookings are cancelled, his writings are hard to find, he is the ongoing victim of a price tag attack being carried out by his own people because he will not support a criminal network.
And that is what this 'BANJO' thing is, in our opinion - just another manifestation of a larger criminal network. This network isn't about guns, or drugs (although sometimes it is). This network is an influence network, it exists to monitor and influence the other organizations (networks) with which it is in contact and into which it has insinuated itself. That is what Jewish Power is - an international influence-peddling network, run by people who may or may not share religious convictions or a genetic background in common but whose common interest in The Network binds them together.
We think the members of 'BANJO' should disavow their reflexive herd behavior ... vow to not contact one another without a legitimate business reason, in writing, using government-provided electronic mail addresses ... vow not to try to influence one another or one another's professional peers ... and focus on doing one job well, that job being representing the electorate and only the electorate.
If they are not prepared to do this then why did they seek these offices? There is only one answer: to advance Jewish Power - it is Jewish Power that elected them to office and it is Jewish Power to which they answer. Not the electorate.
For more information, see the definition for the word 'nebbish'. The very existence of the word clearly shows to anyone with half a brain that this tendency towards spinelessness, amongst Yiddish speakers, was well known, a thousand fuckin' years ago. It's not a new problem. Nebbishes are a plague upon us all - even other Jews.
Food for thought.