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Jamaal Anthony Bowman (born April 1, 1976) is an American politician and educator serving as the U.S. representative for New York's 16th congressional district since 2021. The district covers the southern half of Westchester County, including Mount Vernon, New Rochelle, and Bowman's hometown of Yonkers, as well as a small portion of the Bronx. Bowman is the founder and former principal of the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, a public middle school in Eastchester, Bronx. He defeated 16-term incumbent Eliot Engel in the 2020 Democratic primary and was first elected to Congress that fall. Bowman is a member of the Squad, an informal group of progressive House Democrats. He was a member of the Lower Hudson Valley chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America until 2022, when he departed the organization over disagreements on policy regarding Israel. On October 26, 2023, Bowman pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for willfully setting off a false fire alarm in the Cannon House Office Building. In exchange for his guilty plea, the charge was dropped. On December 7, 2023, the House of Representatives voted 214–191 to censure him in connection with the fire alarm incident. Early life and education Bowman was born in Manhattan, a borough of New York City. He lived with his grandmother in the East River Houses in East Harlem during the week and with his mother and sisters in Yorkville on the Upper East Side on weekends. His grandmother died when he was eight years old, after which he lived full time on the Upper East Side. At age 16, he moved with his family to Sayreville, New Jersey. He attended Sayreville War Memorial High School, where he played on the football team. Bowman briefly attended Potomac State Junior College in West Virginia before earning a Bachelor of Arts in sports management from the University of New Haven in 1999. At the latter institution, he played college football as a linebacker for the New Haven Chargers. Bowman later earned a Master of Arts in counseling from Mercy College and a Doctor of Education in educational leadership from Manhattanville College. Teaching career After earning his undergraduate degree, Bowman decided not to pursue a career in sports management. Upon the suggestion of a family friend who worked for the New York City Department of Education, Bowman began working as an educator. His first job was as a crisis management teacher in a South Bronx elementary school. In 2009, he founded Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, a public middle school in the Bronx. As principal of Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, Bowman curated a "wall of honor" featuring prominent Black, Latino, and Asian individuals. The featured people included Martin Luther King Jr., Sonia Sotomayor, Cynthia McKinney, Mutulu Shakur, and Assata Shakur. Daniel Marans, writing in HuffPost, criticized Bowman for including "a notorious antisemite and two Black militants convicted of murder and armed robbery"; Bowman's campaign spokesperson responded that it is "a rhetorical tool of the far right to insinuate educating students on major figures of Black American history is serving to promote hateful or divisive rhetoric or actions." Bowman became a leading advocate against standardized testing. His blog on the role of standardized testing has received national attention. He has written about high-stakes testing's role in perpetuating inequalities, including the turnover, tumult, and vicious cycle it creates in students' and educators' lives, as assessment performance damages a school's ability to teach and, subsequently, the quality of the education upon which the student is assessed. By the mid-2010s, a quarter of Bowman's students had opted out of standardized testing. Bowman also advocated for children to receive arts, history, and science education in addition to the basics of literacy and numeracy. Bowman's school policy used a restorative justice model to address the school-to-prison pipeline. After 10 years as principal, he left the job to focus on his congressional campaign. U.S. House of Representatives Elections 2020 The Justice Democrats recruited Bowman to run for the United States House of Representatives in New York's 16th congressional district, represented by 16-term incumbent Eliot Engel. Engel had served as a member of the House since 1989 and as chair of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs since the first session of the 116th United States Congress. Bowman was inspired to run by the insurgent 2018 campaign of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and described his platform as "anti-poverty and anti-racist", with support for housing, criminal justice reform, education, Medicare for All, and a Green New Deal. No Republican even filed, meaning that whoever won the Democratic primary would be essentially assured of victory in November. Registered Democrats in the district outnumber registered Republicans by more than four to one, meaning that any hypothetical Republican challenger would have faced nearly impossible odds in any case. Bowman's campaign criticized Engel's record on foreign policy and response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Bowman's endorsements from the Sunrise Movement and the New York Working Families Party assisted with fundraising despite being well behind Engel. He was also endorsed by Ocasio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and the editorial board of The New York Times. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, a large portion of ballots were cast absentee, but because of Bowman's 26-point lead on election night, news outlets soon started referring to him as the presumptive Democratic nominee. On July 17, 2020, based on their analysis of the absentee ballot count, the Associated Press called the primary race for Bowman. Bowman's primary victory all but guaranteed he would win the general election due to the 16th's heavily Democratic nature and the lack of Republican opposition. He won in a landslide, defeating Conservative nominee Patrick McManus with 84% of the vote. Tenure Upon his swearing-in, Bowman joined The Squad, a group of progressive Democratic lawmakers. He was photographed alongside the four original Squad members and another new member, Cori Bush of Missouri's 1st congressional district. In January 2021, following the storming of the United States Capitol, Bowman introduced the Congressional Oversight of Unjust Policing Act (COUP Act) to establish a commission to investigate how United States Capitol Police handled the storming of the Capitol and to look at potential ties of some of its members to white nationalism. Bowman said that introducing the bill is "critical when you look at the disparity in terms of how the Capitol Police responded to the insurrection on Wednesday, versus how they responded to—not just [Black Lives Matter] protestors this summer, but other people of color, and people who are disabled, historically". Such legislation came after both Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer called for the resi.... Discover the Jamaal West popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Jamaal West books.