Meet the Teachers’ Union Director Arrested for Shutting Down Traffic Outside a Pro-Israel Conference
9th December 2023
A teachers’ union official affiliated with the National Education Association was arrested in Denver for shutting down a busy intersection outside of a prominent Jewish conference, records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show.
Alex Borenstein was among the 15 anti-Israel protesters arrested Sunday in Denver for shutting down Speer Boulevard, a major street located outside of the Colorado Convention Center, which was hosting the Global Conference for Israel. Borenstein—a self-avowed communist—serves as a northeast director for the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, an NEA affiliate that represents more than 4,000 public school teachers in the Colorado city. Borenstein himself serves as a union liaison for educators at more than 30 Denver-area schools, including at least 8 elementary schools.
Borenstein’s arrest shows that the proliferation of anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incidents and rhetoric is affecting American K-12 schools, not just college campuses. In one instance, a liberal school board president in upstate New York argued that Jews are to blame for the slave trade, a long-debunked anti-Semitic trope first advanced by Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam. In another, a public school district in Massachusetts sent its teachers a resource that said “Israeli terrorism” has historically been “significantly worse than that of the Palestinians.”