In 2018, I was elected Democratic district leader for the 44th Assembly District with a mandate to reform Brooklyn’s notoriously undemocratic county party. For the last eight years, I have spent countless hours fighting for a more transparent, democratic county party. After eight years of fighting, I decided not to run for reelection this year.
This June, a reform coalition led by the New Kings Democrats, calling itself Brooklyn Can’t Wait, won a majority to oust the current chair, Assemblywoman Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, and elect Julio Peña III as her successor.
Facing defeat, Bichotte Hermelyn and her supporters pushed through bylaw changes to pack the executive committee with allies. These changes were not voted on by incoming leaders, but by current district leaders, including those just beaten by Brooklyn Can’t Wait. Many of these amendments passed by a single vote.
I voted against the resolutions, but far more reluctantly than I ever anticipated.
My hesitation stemmed from learning that the Brooklyn Can’t Wait coalition’s majority was propped up by the election of Carmella Charrington, an unapologetic antisemite.
Since November 2025, Charrington has shared an Instagram video promoting Henry Ford’s antisemitic tract “The International Jew,” calling its phony theories about Jewish control of banks and the media “the truth.” When asked about it, she doubled down by telling the reporter to “get your rabbi.” Days before Tuesday’s vote, she blamed Brooklyn’s deed theft problem on “the Zionists.”
There is no place for antisemitism in the Brooklyn Democratic Party. That’s why I joined fellow district leaders, led by my other Jewish colleagues, calling for Charrington’s resignation. The response from Brooklyn Can’t Wait was beyond disappointing.
My longtime friends and allies stayed silent, leaving Tony Melone, president of the New Kings Democrats, to speak for them. Melone did not condemn Charrington. Instead, he condemned the mostly Jewish district leaders demanding accountability, while dismissing the sincerity of our concern with Charrington’s antisemitism. He warned his coalition that acknowledging Charrington’s antisemitism would “throw away everything we’ve worked for.” His message was clear: his coalition was willing to take power at the Jewish community’s expense.
Peña was the exception. His statement fell short of calling for Charrington’s resignation, but it acknowledged her antisemitism and the hurt she caused. Peña is smart and principled. I believe he’s the future of the Brooklyn Democratic Party, and he has my full support. I can’t say the same for the coalition he leads.
The choice facing concerned district leaders Tuesday was between empowering a leadership willing to rig its bylaws to keep power, or a coalition willing to tolerate antisemitism to acquire it. I voted no on the resolutions, but given the alternative, I understand those who didn’t.
Neither outcome should have been on the table. A party leadership willing to manipulate its rules to hold onto power doesn’t deserve to keep it. But a coalition that tolerates antisemitism doesn’t deserve to get it.
When leaders of one of the largest county Democratic organizations in the country, in a city home to more Jews than anywhere outside Israel, stay silent in the face of antisemitism, people notice and 2,000 years of Jewish history show that silence in the face of antisemitism enables more, and more dangerous, antisemitism.
History does not remember those who stayed silent kindly, and neither will Brooklyn’s Jews. Leaders who claim to stand for democracy have to stand for their Jewish neighbors too. Anything less isn’t reform. It’s just a new set of leaders selling out Brooklyn’s Jews for their own power.
Schneider is the outgoing Democratic district leader for the 44th Assembly District covering parts of Park Slope, Windsor Terrace, Kensington, and Boro Park.