New YorkThe night fell like lead on Manhattan after the city’s 5,000 polling stations closed on November 3rd. At 9 p.m., when in other times the traffic rolls noisily down Broadway and the bars and restaurants are bursting at the seams, the only sound to be heard in Times Square was the booming of police helicopters. Only now and then did a figure flit past the prophylactic boarded up windows of Midtown.
Otherwise, the supposed heart of the city belonged to a dozen homeless people and a group of Russian tourists who danced the macarena in the middle of the square in front of a loudspeaker system that they had brought with them. They were perhaps the only ones in town who weren’t nervous about their televisions at the time.
The closing of the polling stations marked the end of a long election season that the city had thrown itself into with verve like never before. For 14 days, from the opening of the first polling stations, which this time allowed people to vote early, you saw long queues in all neighborhoods in front of the school buildings and gyms where the archaic American voting machines were set up. New Yorkers stood on the street for three, sometimes four hours, whatever the weather, to cast their votes, and then proudly wore stickers on their chests, showing that they had done their civic duty.
More than a million people in the city had cast their votes before election day even came. Another million had voted by mail. As across the country this year, voter turnout in the city broke all records. Not so many Americans had voted since 1908.
This level of political engagement was particularly unusual for New York. Conventional wisdom has it that in New York it doesn’t matter whether you vote or not, especially in national elections. The state is democratic anyway, and the presidential candidate gets the same number of electors, regardless of whether one million or ten million people cast their votes.
But this year everything was different. New Yorkers had endured three and a half years of the Trump administration, three and a half years in which they had no outlet for their daily anger other than talking to family or social media. The long months of lockdown and the economically tense situation in the city had increased the tension to the brink of tolerability.
So it was a release when it finally started. At last something could be done. Washington was finally able to show what they think of this administration, if only that in the end it helped Trump to get a thick lesson in the counting of the absolute votes.
But the political commitment of the New Yorkers did not end with the vote this year. Anyone who could somehow tried to do more.
In the early morning of November 3rd, Jesse Blackman was standing on the corner of 153rd Street and Amsterdam Avenue handing out leaflets from the Working Families Party to voters. The Working Families are a force in New York politics, they have been supporting left-progressive candidates from Alexandria Ocasio Cortez to city councilors like Jumaane Williams for many years, and anyone who wants to achieve something in New York vies for their favor . They are tightly organized and can mobilize hundreds of thousands of voters.
“It’s not just about the presidency,” said Jesse, who is just one of hundreds of volunteers serving in the Working Families Party today. “We want to push our candidates at all levels and make sure that left-progressive politics are represented throughout the country.”
Jesse and the Working Families are among those who only made a strategic pact with Joe Biden. “Of course, the top priority for us now is to get rid of Trump.” But for the American left this is “not an end, but a beginning.”
Jesse has no illusions that Biden has progressive politics. “Public health insurance for everyone, free university education, housing equality, the Green New Deal,” says Jesse, these are all things for which you must continue to fight in the party.
Therefore, for Jesse and his comrades, the other politicians who are on the ballot papers are at least as important as Biden. Candidates like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who had to defend her seat in the House of Representatives on November 3rd. Or their colleagues from other New York boroughs like Jamaal Bowman, a school principal from the Bronx who was appointed for the first time. Or Richie Torres, also from the Bronx, who if elected would be the first Congressman in Washington, who is Latino and openly gay.
But not all New Yorkers who got involved this election season had such open political goals. Thousands have been channeling their pent-up frustration into more neutral political activities for weeks. Simple activities like calling neighbors and making sure that they are on the voting lists and know exactly where to go on election day. Or stand in front of the whale bar as a neutral observer to report any attempts at interference or manipulation.
But now that the last vote had been cast, all this frenetic activity had also come to a standstill. Now New York could only do one thing: wait with the rest of the world and hope that America can be brought back, that the nation can be a different nation from what Donald Trump made it.
But the wait would not end. Times Square remained eerily empty at ten and eleven o’clock. The hundreds of police officers who had been assigned to secure Broadway down to Union Square for fear of rioting stood around their cars and were bored. The group of left-wing activists who had gathered on 14th Street just in case, drank beer from paper bags and discussed the polarization and racism in the country louder and louder.
The longer election night went on in town, the more the euphoric energy of the previous weeks gave way to a growing depression. Around 11 p.m., when it became clear that the race was going to be closer than ever, Susan Glasser, columnist for the “New Yorker”, gave free rein to her frustration and articulated what was going through the minds of many in the city: “I can do it I cannot believe that after 230,000 deaths this is the state of our country. “
In just a few hours, the hope was dashed that the nation would give Donald Trump a massive lesson for his incompetence, unscrupulousness and corruption. Instead, the voting card looked the way it always looked. The red states were red, the blue states were blue, and the wobbly states wobbled. America, as the left-wing liberals in New York and throughout the country had to accept bitterly, has learned nothing. There would be no cut, no dramatic new beginning.
New York woke up the day after the election with a gigantic hangover. Instead of finding yourself in a new world, as after election night in 2008, you saw yourself facing a tremendous match like four years ago. And Trump’s nocturnal threats to let the court rule in every state he was behind brought back memories of the year 2000, when the Federal Supreme Court only brought a decision after many weeks and almost tore the country apart.
By the afternoon New York had found the strength to take to the streets again. At least one could comfort oneself with the fact that AOC had defended its congress seat confidently and that it would take its new colleagues Jamaal Bowman and Richie Torres with them to Washington. And by the early afternoon it looked as if Biden would make it into the White House with one or two electoral votes.
And at least for that New York would fight. For example, at four on Thursday afternoon, a few hundred people gathered on the stairs of the Public Library on Fifth Avenue to rear themselves. For their city, for their country and for the democracy that New Yorkers, but also fellow citizens throughout the country, had practiced so impressively in the weeks before the election and on election day itself.
The march was soothing consolation for the shock the night before. Young activists from the Working Families Party or the Democratic Socialists walked down Fifth Avenue with seniors in wheelchairs, families and ordinary office people, demanding that every single vote in the country be counted. In the restaurants along the avenue, the waitresses and guests stood up together and applauded. At least here and now, America didn’t feel lost.
But the temporary high came to an abrupt end. After an hour and a half, the New York police had lost patience and decided to brutally break up the meeting. Officials in riot gear drove wedges into the crowd, surrounded smaller groups and arrested around 60 demonstrators.
After that, the same ghostly silence of the previous day settled over the city, pervaded only by sirens. Over and over again, parades of emergency vehicles circled Greenwich Village, where the demos had been smashed, and made their presence felt. What was left was to go home. And wait.
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