I have known Jamaal Bowman as an enlightened educator and a fighter for social justice. Right now, he is running for Congress against a senior Democrat, Elliot Engel. Engel is a 16-term member of Congress and chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. Most people think of Jamaal as a long shot.

But the times are changing. Jamaal has raised nearly $1 million. He was endorsed by AOC. He is young and energetic and passionate.

Michelle Goldberg, a regular columnist for the New York Times, wrote an extraordinary column about Jamaal.

Goldberg wrote:

On March 1, which feels about 20 years ago, NBC News published an essay by a congressional candidate, Jamaal Bowman, about the scars he bore from life in New York under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was then still running for president.

“As a working-class black male educator during the entirety of Bloomberg’s tenure, I got to experience the horrors and the trauma of how his police department treated people like me,” wrote Bowman. He described an inexplicable arrest following a routine traffic stop, and another after he was accused of stealing his own car. He wrote about Eric Garner and Sean Bell, two black men killed by N.Y.P.D. cops, and about the growing police presence in the city schools where Bowman had made his career.

Last March, when the NBC article appeared, Goldberg wrote him off. But the world has changed since the killing of George Floyd.

Now Jamaal Bowman has a shot at winning. He would be a great addition to Congress.

I endorsed Jamaal months ago. He has all the right ingredients to be a strong voice on behalf of his district, on behalf of education, on behalf of the black and brown students he worked so hard to educate as principal of the Cornerstone Academy of Social Action, and on behalf of their families. He would fight for those who have been left behind by poverty, institutional neglect, and racism.

If you live in the Sixteenth Congressional District in the Bronx, please vote for Jamaal Bowman for Congress.