If elected to Congress, Bowman said he would put the focus on issues related to poverty in the United States.
Jamaal Bowman, a former educator and school principal from the Bronx in New York, appears to have defeated 16-term Rep. Eliot Engel Tuesday night in the Democratic primary for that seat in Congress.
Although votes were still being counted due to the large volume of absentee ballots, many news agencies were announcing Bowman’s win, and the candidate himself declared victory in a rousing speech that evening.
Addressing supporters, Bowman paid particular attention to the idea of poverty in the United States. “We live in a country where despite our financial wealth, we have tens of millions of children still living in poverty,” he said.
Bowman expanded upon the subject, noting that poverty was not something that happened as a result of a person’s actions, but was more institutional.
“Poverty is not the result of children and families who don’t work hard. Our children and families work as hard as anyone else,” Bowman explained. “Poverty is by political design, and it’s rooted in a system that has been fractured and corrupt and rotten from its core from the inception of America, especially over the last several decades.
“Poverty, and the impact of poverty on our children, and dealing with issues of institutional racism, and sexism, and classism, and xenophobia, and everything that keeps the majority of us oppressed is what we designed this campaign to fight against,” he added.
