"I'm the best version of myself here," Erin Schrode says after an hour-long conversation on her unique career.
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Schrode, an up-and-coming Jewish-American entrepreneur and social activist, had arrived in Israel to give a speech at the Birthright Israel Excel conference, sharing her own insight on how the program that brings young Jews from all over the world on a 10-day tour of Israel changed her, and possibly even her career.
Schrode is no stranger to public life and fighting for causes she believes in, both in her community and for the greater good.
She formed an environmental NGO as a teen and even ran for Congress at the age of 24, and she continues to promote a whole host of environmental and social causes to this day.
Schrode's statement about how she is her best version in Israel is particularly interesting since says this feeling of belonging to Israel has not worn off ever since her first trip to Israelonthat program. She was brought up in a home where Judaism was loosely observed and Israel was not a major part of life. But then, in 2010, a 19-year-old Shcrode joined Birthright Israel's 10-day without even really knowing what to expect, only to discover that it was a life-changing experience.
After coming back to the US, Schrode set her sights on national politics, becoming a rising force on the Left, to the point that 6 years later she was on the verge of becoming the Democratic nominee in the race to represent California's second congressional district, a heavily democratic area. Had she won the nomination and then gone on to win the general election (as most Democrats in California do), she would have become the youngest member of Congress at 25.
Schrode's path to social activism began at a very young age when she saw her mother's non-stop pursuit of answers in the face of an unexplained rise in cancer cases in Marine County, California.
"By all accounts, it was an idyllic place and one of the most affluent counties in America, but it had the highest breast, prostate, and melanoma cancer rates. It was plagued with a public health crisis, and people were dying. The supervisors said there wasn't enough money to do the testing but that didn't sit right with my mom, she organized a grassroots campaign from our living room. And so my mom had this idea ー I was 11 years old at the time ー to organize volunteers to go to households on one day, and ask why. Everyone must know why your cancer is off the charts. So 3,000 volunteers went to 50,000 households on one day and asked that question, and everybody had their own ideas. There are so many things I've learned from my mom throughout my life, but one is that you don't stand idly by in the face of injustice, and you take action."
Having caught the political bug from her mother, Schrode resolved to follow her example and founded the environmentalist NGO Turning Green when she was only 13.
"I think, for me, that's the beauty of youth is that we questioned the status quo, that we don't blindly accept things, and that our minds are still malleable, which is why I spent the last 17 years of my life working with young people. Because that's such a right moment where we set ourselves, our communities and our families, our societies, and our peoples up for the rest of our lives. So we started organizing teenagers. It's now a nonprofit, 17 years later if you told me that, this is what I'd be doing. I'd say you're crazy. But it's who I am."
Q: I want to take you back to Birthright. Obviously, something clicked on that trip in 2010, because six years later you ran for Congress. Why do you think a 10-day visit to Israel put this in motion?
"A friend asked me when I was 19 if I wanted to do Birthright. I said, 'What's Birthright?', and she said it was a free trip to Israel. Now where I'm from, everything that I told you that went along with all of those bullet points, those talking points, those ideologies, was anti-Israel. I wanted to come on Birthright to go to Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, and the West Bank. I have friends in all those places, activists who fought for environmental and social causes. And for me, it was a plane ticket to a part of the world that I had never thought I would see. And I landed at Ben Gurion and I walked across the street and I felt this visceral sense of warmth as if I were home, and it was something that I've never felt in my life. And I have the privilege of doing work that's very aligned with my values. That's very true to my core, and 12 years later I have tears in my eyes, and I spent the next 10 days seeing so many of my values in action. I saw my progressive values in action in Israel, I saw the renewable energy and the biotech and the female representation in the judiciary. I was going, 'What is this place?, these aren't the images that I think I was fed of Israel as an activist growing up in the States, and my mind was perpetually blown.
"I also had the privilege of bunking with a 21-year-old officer in the Intelligence Corps. Here I was sitting with my peer, who shared my same values. And I also met environmentalists and activists and I was sitting with her and this was probably one of the most powerful moments in my life. She kept using the word Zionism. And I said, 'What does it mean?'"
Q: You had never heard of that term before?
"I had heard it tossed around. But no, if you'd asked me to define it at the age of 19, I couldn't. And there we were, probably staying up far past our bedtime, talking about a movement towards and a struggle for self-determination of our people, you know, in our ancestral homeland. And I looked at her and I said, 'I think I'm a Zionist.' And I spent the next 10 days, realizing that I was. But then I left."
During the interview Schrode makes it clear that Israel was more than just about history, it was about a path forward too, for her own experience in the US, and that she would not be defined by the regular mantras surrounding Israel in the progressive discourse on the American Left.
"I had this unbelievable gift of a journey. But I knew what I was going back to. I knew from whence I came. And talking about Israel and the movements that I was a part of, wasn't something that people did, I marched in the first Women's March [after President Donald Trump was inaugurated], I was in the streets with Black Lives Matter before BDS was written to the platform. I was at Standing Rock [pipeline protest], and they had a sign that said, 'We stand in solidarity with the oppressed Palestinian people living under the apartheid state of Israel.' I crossed the line. I started to see Israel popping up."
Schrode said that she could not accept such slogans, especially in light of the sides of Israel that she saw first-hand as part of her social activism, to which other organizations were blind.
"I was in Haiti after the earthquake, and I launched an education project and I saw Magen David Adom there, I was in Lesbos in Greece with the refugee crisis, I heard Hebrew being spoken behind me, and it was IsrAid on their shores; I was in Puerto Rico, where I ran a very large humanitarian feeding program following Hurricane Maria and there was this Israeli agricultural and water technology being used in the wake of the hurricane.
"Birthright changed my life. Personally, it had connected me to a land, to a people to history to a living, breathing, current vibrant society, with which I not only wanted to connect or was invited to but professionally outwardly. That wasn't anything that I talked about."
Having stood against her own camp's anti-Israel agenda, it did not take long for her to channel this determination into a political cause and run for office.
"I've always believed fiercely in the power and importance of policy and legislation and politics. I've operated mostly at the local level, we fought for a lot of bills and pieces of legislation at the county and state level because so goes California so goes the nation. I never saw myself as a politician but then I gave a speech, a talk in the Bay Area, in Marin County. And I walked offstage and two people said, 'How do we get you to run for office?' and this was in early 2016. I looked at them and said, you have got the wrong girl. I was 24 years old at the time, I'd never held elected office."
Q: Why why why would you consider yourself being the wrong girl? I mean, you literally had it in you from day one.
"In my mind, politicians were a different breed of human. I hadn't spent decades in corporate boardrooms or law offices in the halls of government. I didn't own millions in the bank. I didn't fit the mold of what I thought of as a politician. I've been involved in policy but not politics. And I have three weeks until the filing deadline. And I started having conversations with people who are wiser than I. And for me, I've always been very clear in my purpose and had to figure out why I was doing it. What if I didn't know why I was running for office? Why would anybody vote for me? So I had to become clear on why I was doing it. And really, it was to redefine civic engagement."
Q: At the time, you said there was no one under 30 in Congress. You were the champion of the under-represented.
"Yeah, but I wanted to reinvigorate a culture of public service, and expand the definition of who could be a politician. Yes. I haven't seen anybody who looked like me who talked like me in office at the time. But I wasn't in it to make history, I actually want to make a difference. I think that's what caught people by surprise. At the time, I'd been working in this field for 11 years. That's not normal, for a 24-year-old; my life has taken a very circuitous path."
Schrode ultimately filed to compete in the Democratic primaries in March 2016, just as the nation was rocked by the stunning rise of Donald Trump on the Republican side, effectively taking away any attention from all other candidates on both camps. In California, the Democratic nominee for the 2nd Congressional District was all but guaranteed to win against the Republican nominee in November, so Schrode was essentially running a general election campaign not for the nomination but for the actual seat. Despite falling short, her candidacy made an imprint on progressive politics in California, which is not an easy thing to achieve, especially by creating a sense of urgency among young female voters who want to be heard in Washington.
Q: In one of your speeches on YouTube, you don't even stand at the podium, you just walk around and go to the audience for questions, which was like a dialogue. Is that what transformed your campaign, even though you lost? Do you think that that was what made you different?
"I made contact with people, I break that fourth wall, I jump off the stage if there is a stage I shake the hands. I'm 31 years old now, but I still feel like a kid. I still feel like a college student. But in our campaign, I think what surprised people was that I wasn't afraid to have the hard discussions."
Q: Including on Israel?
"Yeah, but that wasn't something that I came out with. That wasn't something that I led with. That was something that I put forth as a policy decision and five days before the election I was actually so excited these two small Jewish publications reached out and asked to interview me. Did I want to do an interview? Of course, I remember I was up in the northern part district on my cell phone walking around a convenience store looking for nuts. The vegan snacks were few and far between. And the headline said, 'Progressive, pro-Israel and potentially youngest person in Congress.' I know exactly where I was when I read that headline. Pro Israel? That's a dirty moniker where I come from. And I read the article. And it actually represented what I said where I stood. But my campaign manager looked at me and he said, 'Eric, this is going to cost us.'"
Q: Do you think this is what cost you the primaries?
"I don't. I don't I think that. My number one piece of advice to anyone running is start early. We launched the campaign seven days before the election. And that's just not enough of a ramp to get to where we need it. And I think with more time, we could have closed that gap. But this article that came out, within hours, there was a newsletter circulating inside saying it's like spitting on the grave of a murdered Palestinian child."
Q: Who wrote it?
"A local newsletter, by activists who had worked with me for more than a decade. And that was the first time that I saw that there's this litmus test imposed on people on the Left by progressive Democrats and liberals. You can't be pro-Israel and pro-progressive, it didn't matter that I agreed with them on 99% of the issues. Suddenly, they had some oversimplified litmus tests on it. So I failed. So I remember my campaign manager said, 'We need to respond to this.' I wanted to, I woke up the next day, and I had my phone six inches from my face. I opened it and I opened my email and I saw my face with a yellow Jude scar on my chest next to a monster. And it said, 'Get out of my country kike. Get back to his real where you belong.' And I scrolled through my email and there were dozens of emails, as well as voicemails on my cell phone. And there were thousands of pieces of hate speech and acute death threats on social media and across the internet."
Q: People say that if you're attacked by both sides, you're probably right.
"I have always felt like that. My mom is a Democrat, my dad is a Republican, and I grew up hearing both of them, falling somewhere in the middle. But it was this very bizarre convergence of the extremes. One side, coming from the extreme Left, says that it is fine to be a Jew, but if you're a good Jew, you have to be an anti-Israel; and on the other side, [on the extreme Right] they say, 'You filthy Jew, get out. This is in your country, you do not belong, you're inferior.' I think so many things in my life changed in June of 2016. But more than anything, for the first time, in my life, I was seen as Jewish in the eyes of the world. I was armed to the board but I was equipped with facts, with experience with personal anecdotes. Because of a 10-day journey that I've been gifted with on the ground in Israel, I just went back to that moment, which at that point was six years prior. And I, I really fundamentally see that trip as one of the largest turning points in my life, like running for Congress, but I saw so many young people being faced with that false choice. Are you an activist or a Zionist? Will you stand for Israel? Or will you rise up behind Judaism and social justice? I've never been one to be put in boxes. I face the same stuff around environmentalism. This is what I was talking about last night. This isn't a binary choice. But over the past six years the Left, the progressive movement, has become even more vitriolic and anti-Israel. And I understand why people fall prey to that because it's just thrown in there with a myriad of other causes, that people do believe that they do understand that they are willing to fight for. And unfortunately, 750,000 young people being brought to the State of Israel on a trip is one of the greatest feats, I think, in the history of the Jewish people."
Q: A lot of Jews in the US, I guess the Bernie Sanders camp, are pro-BDS. Maybe even this anti-Israel rhetoric is just as strong coming from some Jews as it is from non-Jews.
"I think that there is a small vocal minority that is making a lot of noise; they are not representative of the American Jewish community. They are tokenized and used by the Left when you see If Not Now and Jewish Voice for Peace popping up in every progressive space. There are a couple others but the list is not so long…contrary to the little Twittersphere, or, you know, these liberal arts institutions, most people are not talking about Israel 99% of the time. We're not the center of attention. There are massive domestic policy crises happening in my country that we need to address. Now, if you come at me, because of my support of Israel, because of my Jewish identity, great. But I'm going to lead with other stuff. I'm going to work and I think for me, it's about refusing a litmus test, I can be all of these things, and support the State of Israel. But I'm not going to lead with that. Because I don't think that that's the most important thing for the success of domestic policy agendas in the US today. There are moments, certainly, that's what we need to be talking about it first, but not most of the time."
Schrode made sure to point out her active involvement in pro-Israel organizations during the interview, making it clear she is not just about talking the talk. "I sit on the boards of Zioness unabashedly progressive, unapologetically Zionist, IsraAID (a global humanitarian organization), and Birthright-Israel's education committee that plans curriculum and follow-up around trips. I am deeply proud of pushing the needle and making a real impact with all three. As well as three environmental organizations."
Q: I guess a lot of counties I mean, districts are having their primaries ahead of the midterms. So what's your advice to progressive, pro-Israel candidates?
"Do the work? I'm much more interested in what candidates are doing than what they're saying. What matters to your district, That's what you should be talking about. Yes, if you are confronted and asked, certainly go on the record with what you believe and what you want to talk about regarding the State of Israel, and the heart of your discussion, part of your agenda, the heart of your campaign should be about the issues that matter most and affect the daily lives of people in your district because that is what matters to them."
Q: Will you run again?
"I think so. I can't tell you for what office…I believe fiercely in the importance of a diverse base of elected officials who represent constituencies that there's seeking to serve. I'm very proud of where I'm from in the San Francisco Bay Area. But I think anybody who tells you what they'll run for, and in five years, 10 years, 20 years, don't understand the landscape. And you should be running because of the issues that matter and the people that you're seeking to represent. I think local office is very, very important. And I think the place where I feel I can be most impactful right now is outside of elected office. And I'm incredibly proud of the work that our nonprofits doing. And eight months of the pandemic we served 20,000,090 point 7 million, but almost 20 million organic meals source packed and served in Northern California. And that's coming from local organic farms, local businesses, for local students, so positively impacting local soils, local economies, local health, and local family. I'm an activist. everything I've talked about with anybody is dirt, about carbon sequestration, healthy soils, and climate resilience."
Q: And you will run ー if you runー as a Democrat?
"Yeah. I believe that unlike Israel, where there are umpteen political parties, we do still have a two-party system. And while I have a problem with the polarization that's happening in the States, that the pendulum swung to the extremes both on the Left and on the Right, the way to impact change in the most effective way, I believe, is still running through the Democratic and Republican Party. And I believe in a lot of the tenets of the Democratic Party and have for my entire life. I don't believe that this extreme anti-Israel bias is true to the heart of the values to the core and the bulk of the base of the Democratic Party. And I think we need people, especially young people, and progressives, who share a lot of the values and platforms that I do, to proudly stand up as a part of the Democratic Party, whether we're voters or were running for office and redefine what that actually looks like and not let it be hijacked by a few non-representative voices who think that they have some monopoly on truth as it relates to Israel."
Q: Are you considering moving to Israel?
"I cannot say that I don't think we're making aliyah. The sensation that I had when I landed at Ben Gurion on Birthright-Taglit for my first time in Israel, at the age of 19, is a sensation that is a sensation that I get every time I'm here. I started crying on the plane here. My friends always ask me, 'Do you think it'll wear off? Do you think that the magic and the sensation you feel when you come to Israel, will wear off?' Twelve years strong and I actually have tears in my eyes looking over the city (Tel Aviv). I think I have a role to play in my country in the US as an activist fighting for so many of the climate and social movements with which I'm deeply embedded, and also, as an American Jew, and I don't take that responsibility lightly. I've never been more grateful for the existence of the State of Israel, as a literal safe haven and refuge, but also as a place that safeguards and nurtures and elevates and catalyzes so many things in which I believe not only around faith in history and culture and peoplehood, but also about progressive values and, and climate and social movements. I am the best version of myself here. I am one of the best versions of myself here. I was at the event last night and walked in and people said, 'You have curly hair?' and I said, 'Yes, because in the states I straighten it, and I think it looks more professional, whatever.' And here sitting on the beach in Yafo and I can really tan. I was not surrounded by Jews when I grew up, definitely not Israelis. I think about that a lot. I think one of the greatest things is that the door is always open."
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