{"id":110185,"date":"2024-02-23T18:05:09","date_gmt":"2024-02-23T16:05:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=110185"},"modified":"2024-02-23T13:54:03","modified_gmt":"2024-02-23T11:54:03","slug":"26-05-94","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=110185","title":{"rendered":"Inna Get Your Gun"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Inna Get Your Gun<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

ALEXANDER NAZARYAN<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Brooklyn legislator Inna Vernikov is rising to national prominence by standing up for Israel.<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

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\nCOURTESY INNA VERNIKOV\u2019S OFFICE<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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In August, Inna Vernikov, who represents parts of southern Brooklyn on the New York City Council, was giving a live television interview on Brighton Beach Avenue, the city\u2019s main thoroughfare for immigrants from the former Soviet Union, when a male passerby barged into the frame. He leaned toward Vernikov, who bears a more-than-passing resemblance to Amal Clooney, and kissed her on the cheek, then laughingly went on his way.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Vernikov has long, flowing raven-black hair and high, pronounced cheekbones. But when she speaks, it is in the plain, unvarnished language of Brooklyn\u2019s hinterlands. She responded<\/a> to the unwanted advance in a tone that was once the hallmark of New Yorkers but which had, of late, become harder to find in the wild: \u201cWhat the fuck?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The clip went viral, earning the first-term legislator a share of national attention that has only grown in the ensuing six months. The 39-year-old Vernikov has emerged as a tribune for New Yorkers dismayed by the proliferation of cannabis shops, the unruliness that has become more common in the subway system, the migrant crisis and, most recently, pro-Palestinian protests shutting down streets and bridges.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI\u2019m very loud,\u201d Vernikov told me unapologetically in her legislative office, which is tucked away on Gravesend Neck Road next to an auto body shop, in a part of Brooklyn where scenesters and hipsters don\u2019t tread. \u201cI\u2019m not afraid to speak up about things that I know other people are afraid to speak up about,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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At a time when some Jews worry about being marked for hate<\/a> by the mezuzahs on their doorways, Vernikov has embraced the opposite approach. In a recent Fox News interview<\/a>, she wore a bright blue blazer over a white turtleneck, against which a silver Star of David necklace stood out, catching the studio light. Since Oct. 7, Vernikov\u2019s strong, unapologetic, pro-Israel stance has augmented her popularity with her constituents, while attracting national media attention.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThis is not just about us, this whole war with Hamas,\u201d Vernikov argues. \u201cIt\u2019s not just about Jews. They\u2019re against the West.\u201d It is a version of Samuel Huntington\u2019s controversial clash-of-civilizations<\/a> argument, only the battle lines have been warped by social media and the American academy\u2019s uncontrolled drift into postcolonial incoherence. These days, the would-be revolutionary plastering \u201cdecolonize Brooklyn\u201d stickers all over Crown Heights is most likely an Oberlin grad, or an Etsy project manager.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u2018Inna\u2019s one person. Why isn\u2019t there a bloc of Jewish elected officials who feel the same way?\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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For a generation of Americans primed to see \u201cintersectionality\u201d in every conflict, the Oct. 7 attacks instantaneously fit into a Manichaean view that sees only oppressors and oppressed, colonizer and colonized. The rallies that took place as the kibbutzim of southern Israel were still burning were described as pro-Palestinian, but if the slaughter was the responsibility of Hamas, it stands to reason that there was only Hamas to cheer.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI was so angry at the protests, specifically that they were taking place like a few days after Oct. 7,\u201d Vernikov says. \u201cIt\u2019s like, what are you protesting? While literally blood is still warm, they are yelling \u2018intifada.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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One such protest took place near the campus of Brooklyn College, an area where many religious Jews and Muslims live. It was Oct. 12, five days after the worst attack on Jews since the Shoah. Vernikov showed up with an Israeli flag, which she brandished in front of a barricade holding back the pro-Palestinian crowd.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Vernikov posed for photographs. The soon-to-be-viral images show her in a form-fitting white sweater and tight, bright blue jeans. Tucked against her right hip, and plainly visible in the image, is a handgun<\/a>. Her subsequent arrest made news, just as had the original provocation. The Brooklyn district attorney dismissed the charges since the gun was apparently neither loaded nor functional. The point had been to send a message, and judging by the outrage of progressives, that message was received.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Several days after the gun arrest, Vernikov met with Ingrid Lewis-Martin<\/a>, the most powerful adviser to Mayor Eric Adams. Himself a forthright supporter of Israel, Adams appeared to endorse her message to the pro-Palestinian protestors. HellGate, a news site that covers city politics from a progressive perspective, wondered<\/a> with unalloyed scorn why a top City Hall staffer would sit down for tea<\/a> with a \u201creactionary\u201d like Vernikov. Probably because Adams understands the city more or less like Vernikov does, as much more moderate than progressives want to believe. \u201cMost of her district sees her as a hero now with the war going on in Israel. Many are conservative and have no problem with gun ownership,\u201d political consultant Hank Sheinkopf told<\/a> the New York Post<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cShe\u2019s a tough young lady,\u201d says Dov Hikind, a former state legislator from Brooklyn in whose office she previously worked. \u201cShe\u2019s a real fighter,\u201d he added, before wondering why she often appears to be standing alone. \u201cInna\u2019s one person. Why isn\u2019t there a bloc of Jewish elected officials who feel the same way?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Vernikov was born in Chernivtsi<\/a>, a Ukrainian city close to the Romanian border. The Nazi killing squads of Einsatzgruppe<\/em> D<\/em>, led by the dreaded butcher-sophisticate Otto Ohlendorf,<\/a> swept through the region in 1941; Vernikov believes she lost more than half a dozen family members to the Holocaust. Her family came to the United States in the mid-1990s, settling among Brooklyn\u2019s large community of Russian Jews.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Jews of Sheepshead Bay and the Jews of the Upper West Side may come from the same shtetls, but the many decades between their respective arrivals in the United States have created two divergent cultures. The newer Jews are tougher, less enthralled by Annie Hall<\/em> than by Fauda<\/em>, more open about their bond with Israel, even if they have never been there. These were the Jews I knew growing up, Jews to whom Inna Vernikov makes perfect sense. \u201cI don\u2019t think we should ever call ourselves victims,\u201d Vernikov said. But, she added, Jewish suffering should not go unacknowledged.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Vernikov, center, and Dov Hikind, at her right, at a rally outside the Brooklyn Central Court building demanding justice for a Jewish man who was assaulted in a December 2021 hate crime, on Jan. 18, 2023<\/em><\/span>
\nCOURTESY INNA VERNIKOV\u2019S OFFICE<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Vernikov went to law school in Florida, then returned to New York to work for Hikind and, later, as a small-time immigration lawyer. She first ran for office in 2021. Like many Russian Jews, she was a Democrat who became a Trump supporter. \u201cI can\u2019t support the Democratic Party, which is no longer the party of John F. Kennedy or Bill Clinton,\u201d she told one news outlet<\/a> in 2021. As an attractive young woman running as a Republican in an overwhelmingly Democratic city, she was a political curiosity\u2014and savvy enough to earn the endorsement of Donald Trump Jr.<\/a>, whose grandfather built Trump Village in what decades later would be Vernikov\u2019s district. She beat her Democratic competitor, Steven Sapperstein, with ease, assuming office in early 2022.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Vernikov first made news<\/a> by opposing vaccine mandates<\/a>, which many Orthodox Jews were also against; Russian Jews are pro-science, broadly speaking, but tend to bristle at mandates of any kind. \u201cI\u2019m not afraid to speak up about things that I know other people are afraid to speak up about. And that\u2019s why it gets a lot of attention from the media.\u201d Shortly after assuming office, she pulled funding<\/a> earmarked to the City University of New York Law School, after its faculty council endorsed a resolution supporting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement against Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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A few years ago, supporting Israel in New York City would have been an uncontroversial position for all but the most remote reaches of the left. Today, even Jewish city leaders have been cowed into submission. The city comptroller, Brad Lander, is Jewish but he supports<\/a> a cease-fire, likely in an effort to court progressives ahead of a mayoral run that seems unlikely to go anywhere. Lincoln Restler, a progressive City Council member from brownstone Brooklyn, has been much harder to pin down. He surely has opinions but is plainly hoping no one asks what they are. (For the record, I asked him; Restler directed me to his communications director, who did not respond.)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Jews remain influential in New York politics\u2014Eric Adams has the Haredi bloc to thank<\/a> for his victory in the Democratic mayoral primary in 2021\u2014but not nearly as influential as only a decade or two ago. There now remains a single Jewish congressman <\/a>in a city that once sent a veritable minyan to Washington. \u201cWhat you have is a lack of identity of Jews as Jews,\u201d Sheinkopf, the Democratic insider, told<\/a> The Washington Post<\/em> in 2022, a development he found \u201castounding.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Toward the end of October, several Jewish students at the Cooper Union in Greenwich Village were locked in the library<\/a>\u2014for their own safety, they were told\u2014as pro-Palestinian students marched through the university\u2019s halls, banging on the door and windows of the library. In a strange disconnect, national social media seemed more perturbed by the incident than did New Yorkers themselves, having apparently become accustomed to anti-Jewish hatred by years of slurs and physical attacks.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That evening, Vernikov phoned the Jewish students, then used a long X thread<\/a> that read like a legal brief to describe how the school failed the students and lied to the rest of the city. The press conference she held with the students and their attorneys the following day was covered by national outlets like Politico<\/a> and Newsmax<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cSome people say that I am a camera chaser,\u201d Vernikov told me. She argues that she is giving voice to a silent majority that, even before Oct. 7, often wondered why its representatives in City Hall were busy legislating<\/a> against weight discrimination instead of making the city itself safer and more affordable for working New Yorkers. Since the terror attack, Vernikov has regularly called out pro-Palestinian supporters who have blocked tunnels and bridges, infuriating ordinary New Yorkers who are trying to pick up their kids from school or make it home for dinner.<\/span><\/p>\n

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People are sick and tired of the chaos and anarchy,\u201d she wrote<\/a> on X after a furious driver shoved<\/a> pro-Palestinian protesters out of his way. \u201c@NYCMayor please take control of your city!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On Dec. 10, Vernikov showed up at a Republican gala in Manhattan in a flowing and resplendent blue-and-white dress adorned with the Israeli flag, and posted<\/a> the image to her X account. \u201cWe cannot be afraid! We cannot remain silent! Be Jewish, Be Loud, Be Proud!,\u201d she wrote in an accompanying post. \u201cThis is where we live and we will not be intimidated!\u201d The post has 17 million views.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Vernikov\u2019s critics say she is engaged in the same performative politics as her lefty colleagues. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty clear she\u2019s interested in higher office,\u201d one local advocate who works with the City Council told me, charging that Vernikov is trying to raise her national profile ahead of a congressional run. \u201cShe\u2019s not paying a lot of attention to issues in her district.\u201d Vernikov counters by pointing to her work on housing<\/a> and policing<\/a>. She is currently working with other legislators to combat food stamp fraud<\/a>, a cause unlikely to earn her a prime-time spot on Fox News. Last week, she testified<\/a> in Congress on the impact on New York City of the Biden administration\u2019s border policy.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Although Vernikov is clearly ambitious, and Adams is possibly facing federal corruption charges, I was left with the distinct impression that Vernikov is more interested in heading down to Washington than running for citywide office. Her most likely means of getting there would be to challenge Rep. Yvette Clarke, a seasoned political operator who has resisted progressive constituents\u2019 calls<\/a> to publicly support a cease-fire in Gaza.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But that congressional district is significantly more liberal than the City Council one Vernikov represents today. If Vernikov runs against Clarke and wins, it could be a sign that Oct. 7 was a watershed moment in American politics. \u201cI think after Oct. 7, the world really changed,\u201d Vernikov told me. \u201cAnd I think that if there is an opportunity for me to be a voice on a broader scale, I don\u2019t think I would decline. You know what I mean?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Alexander Nazaryan<\/strong> writes about culture and politics. Find him on X: @alexnazaryan<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Inna Get Your Gun ALEXANDER NAZARYAN Brooklyn legislator Inna Vernikov is rising to national prominence by standing up for Israel. . COURTESY INNA VERNIKOV\u2019S OFFICE In August, Inna Vernikov, who represents parts of southern Brooklyn on the New York City Council, was giving a live television interview on Brighton Beach Avenue, the city\u2019s main thoroughfare […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110185"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=110185"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110185\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110291,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110185\/revisions\/110291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=110185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=110185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=110185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}