The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) officially launched the Jewish Mayors and Municipal Leaders Association (JMMLA) on Monday, uniting Jewish elected municipal leaders from across the United States in a national network dedicated to stronger cities and safer communities.
The JMMLA’s inaugural event was hosted by Miami Beach Mayor Steven Meiner, the association’s founding chair, at the Miami Beach Botanical Garden.
“History has taught the Jewish people the cost of silence,” Meiner said. “As mayors and municipal leaders, we have a responsibility to confront antisemitism, defend democratic values, and ensure every resident feels safe and protected in our communities.”
Meiner added that the JMMLA would amplify a voice “not only on antisemitism but on all issues that are important within the Jewish community. We can be a more powerful force when we work with our allies.”
CAM Chief Government Affairs Officer Lisa Katz said, “Jewish mayors and municipal leaders have shaped American civic life since before this nation was a century old. They have governed through wars and depressions, through prosperity and through hatred, guided by a tradition rooted in justice and the conviction that we are each responsible for one another. That tradition did not emerge from comfort. It emerged from knowing, across generations, what is at stake when governments fail the people they serve. These leaders carry that knowledge into office every day. Now, for the first time, they carry it together.”
In addition to Meiner and Katz, speakers at Monday’s kick-off gathering included Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, Florida International University President and former Florida Lieutenant Governor Jeanette Nuñez, U.S. Congressman Jared Moskowitz (D-FL-23), former Boca Raton Mayor and congressional candidate Scott Singer, and Aventura Mayor Howard Weinberg.
The JMMLA’s founding comes at a fitting moment during Jewish American Heritage Month and just weeks before America’s 250th anniversary, a milestone in which Jewish Americans have played a proud and storied role.
The association will connect members across jurisdictions through peer exchange, shared resources, and coordinated action on the defining issues of local leadership, public safety, extremism prevention, resilience, and the day-to-day work of governing with integrity.
The full text of the JMMLA Formal Proclamation can be read below:
We have seen this before.
Not in history books. In memory. In family stories told at kitchen tables and Passover Seders. In the names of relatives who fled cities that had once welcomed them — cities whose governments looked away.
We are the mayors and municipal leaders of American cities and towns. We are also Jewish. And we have decided that this moment calls for us to say so together, and plainly.
Jewish Americans have held public office since before this nation was a century old. We have governed through wars and depressions, through periods of prosperity and periods of hatred, in red states and blue states, in cities large and small. We have brought to that work a tradition rooted in tzedek (justice) and arevut (the understanding that we are responsible for one another).
That tradition did not emerge from comfort. It emerged from centuries of watching what happens when governments fail to protect their most vulnerable, when institutions erode, and when the warning signs are ignored until it is too late.
We are reading the warning signs. And we are not waiting.
Today, as the United States marks 250 years of democratic life, a democracy in which Jewish Americans have played an integral role since its founding, we establish the Jewish Mayors and Municipal Leaders Association, convened by the Combat Antisemitism Movement, as a permanent home for Jewish municipal leadership in America.
The JMMLA is built on a straightforward premise that the values that have sustained the Jewish people through millennia of adversity are the same values that make cities work. A commitment to truth in governance. The protection of every resident regardless of background or faith. The belief that government exists to serve all of the people, and that those in office have a duty to say so when it falls short.
We are elected officials answerable to our constituents, who have concluded that our shared identity and shared history give us something specific to contribute to this moment in American municipal life.
We therefore commit, as the founding members of the Jewish Mayors and Municipal Leaders Association, to the following:
To govern as if history is watching. Because it is. The leaders who protected their communities in history’s darkest chapters did so through deliberate, specific acts of governance, not through sentiment. We will govern accordingly.
To speak plainly about what we see. Antisemitism in America has reached levels unseen in decades. We see it in our cities. We will not pretend otherwise.
To build cities that belong to everyone. The Jewish historical experience has taught us what it means to be the outsider, the suspect, the scapegoat. That knowledge makes us determined. Every resident of every city we govern, of every background, faith, and circumstance, deserves a government that is working for them.
To stand together. When one of our members faces a threat, we respond. When one of our cities faces a crisis, we share what we know.
To act with urgency. We will each, within 90 days of this founding, take at least one concrete action in our own city to assess and strengthen the safety and belonging of every community we serve. We will be accountable to one another for that commitment.
To invest in what comes next. We will seek out and support the next generation of Jewish civic leaders because the communities we serve deserve leaders who are ready.
This is our founding proclamation. It is not a statement of grievance. It is a declaration of purpose, drawn from who we are and what we know.
We are here. We are governing.
Signed by the founding members of the Jewish Mayors and Municipal Leaders Association Miami Beach, Florida — May 2026