A few intrepid New Yorkers watch the first results in Times Square Foto: Brendan McDermid/reuters
Election night in New York City, on the move with anti-racist initiatives. Its members have no illusions.
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Dhe city is deserted that evening. Most New Yorkers spend the hours after the presidential election at home. On the one hand out of fear of the corona pandemic. On the other hand, out of fear of violence. New York City is a city that traditionally elects democratically. But their big police unions have backed Donald Trump. Last summer, New York police officers repeatedly cracked down on peaceful demonstrators. Ahead of election day, police called on Manhattan businesspeople to protect their shop windows from a possible riot. For election evening and the days after, she developed scenarios of how the city center should be “frozen”.
On the eve of the election, the talk master Oprah Winfrey invited clergymen from Christianity, Judaism and Islam to pray online. Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist, has rallied progressive candidates from all parts of the country to discuss – also online – about raising the minimum wage, climate policy and state health insurance for everyone.
Both called for the election of Joe Biden. On the morning of Election Day, Joe Biden made one last attempt to win over the electorate in Philadelphia. At the same time, his runner-up is making another lightning visit to Michigan.
But neither the prayers nor the politics nor the campaign trips seem to have been enough for Biden to win. The blue wave of the Democratic Party is not sweeping across the country. The hopes and the forecasts of the polls remain unfulfilled. Donald Trump is apparently doing even better than four years earlier.
The activists, who gather on Tuesday evening, two hours before polling stations in New York City close, have never ruled out such a possibility.
“You want a white nation. Anyone who is not healthy and wealthy and knows and is Christian in their own way should either leave the country or die “
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“Four years ago, 60 percent of the members of my union voted for Trump. Even in this democratic city. Today it’s still 50 percent, ”says Rebecca Lamorte. She campaigned for Biden. But the 29-year-old, who works for the Liuna construction workers’ union, isn’t sure the candidate can make it.
Saundrea Coleman, who used to work in the New York Police Department, also has doubts. “I hope and pray for an election victory for Biden and Harris,” said the 54-year-old on election evening, “but the systemic racism in our country is deep.”
Eight minutes and 46 seconds of silence
The two women are the organizers of the daily meeting in Carl-Schurz-Park. Since the beginning of June this year, they have been meeting with neighbors from the Upper East Side in Manhattan every evening, being silent for eight minutes and 46 seconds and then taking a lap down East End Avenue and through the park on the East River. On the street and within earshot of the New York mayor’s residence, they shout the name of George Floyd, on the back of whose neck a white police officer kneeled for 8 minutes and 46 seconds before he died.
In the past 154 days, the two women have never missed their meeting, neither in record heat nor in rain. On the best evenings they had several thousand participants, on other times they were only a few dozen.
Just like 70 percent of the residents of the expensive residential area in the surrounding streets and like the vast majority of the participants in the action, Lamorte knows. “We mustn’t be silent about racism,” she says, “it’s a question of human dignity.”
Coleman is the only African American woman in the park most evenings. “We have 400 years of slavery behind us. We are still being oppressed, ”she says: through police violence, imprisonment and far too little participation in prosperity. The two women demand a drastic cut in the police’s budget, want to disarm them and demand that the sanctity for police officers end. “You need to be held accountable,” says Coleman.
Protest on election evening in New York against Trump and his attempt to delegitimize the election Foto: Brendan McDermid/reuters
“Why is racism even a topic of debate?” Reads one of the dozen hand-painted signs that remain in the park during the day. “Antifa means anti-fascism,” on another. When their signs disappear, the activists paint new ones.
The two women are not easy partners. And they know that they need staying power. Coleman had already expressed sympathy for the Democratic Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris in the primary campaign. In the final spurt of the election campaign, she accompanied dozen senior citizens to the polling station. All activists who came to Carl-Schurz-Park on election evening voted. But none of them believe that politicians will get rid of racism. “We still have a lot of work to do,” says Coleman.
“There’s nothing to celebrate if Biden wins”
In Brooklyn, just under 45 minutes by subway, several citizens’ groups pitched a tent on election evening. District politicians and rap musicians take turns on stage. “We don’t know what’s going to happen,” says an older African American in the early evening, hours before the first results are known, “but please also think of the seniors.” Young people in particular have dared to go into the tent. All are masked. Everyone keeps their distance. There are no more than a few hundred in total.
Unlike most of the participants in the election night, who are constantly staring at their cell phones, the two young people sitting on a cold stone step at the edge of the tent are engrossed in a conversation. They came because they knew the organizers of the demonstrations last summer. But the election results, which gradually roll in from eight o’clock, are of little interest to them.
Like everyone in the tent, Amba and Thomas voted for Democrat Joe Biden. For them it was the lesser of two evils. “There’s nothing to celebrate if Biden wins,” Amba says in a nutshell. For them he is “just another racist and imperialist politician”. Thomas, who is sitting next to her and doesn’t want to give his real first name, nods. He also voted for Biden. He describes his politics as wishy-washy.
The police are monitoring the protests against Trump on election evening, ready to intervene at any time Foto: Brendan McDermid/reuters
Amba is 24 and works as a journalist on immigration and social movements for indymedia. The first presidential election of her life was in 2016, when she abstained. She found Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy “too militaristic” and at the same time she was certain that it would win anyway. When this proved to be a mistake, she hoped that “people would wake up under a President Donald Trump”. In retrospect, she describes both as naive.
Last summer, when Thomas, who was also 24, temporarily lost his job at the museum during the pandemic, the two were often together every day at anti-racist demonstrations. On the evening of the election, they are prepared to demonstrate a lot again in the next few days.
Thomas was born in Korea and he is transgender. He started his transition just two months ago. As an Asian American and as a transgender person, he feels he is being targeted by Trump because he allows people to be fired for “religious” motives.
Amba and Thomas describe their previous life as a series of catastrophes and apocalyptic announcements. You were five years old in the 9/11 attacks. Then followed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which have not ended to this day. And above all, there was concern about climate change. Under Trump there was also heavy police violence. “I have no illusions in politics,” says Amba. But both see themselves as “idealists”. They don’t believe in reform. They want a country without capitalism and with a revolution that also takes the “poor and oppressed” with it. Her favorite as a presidential candidate was Bernie Sanders.
Compared to the two young revolutionaries, 52-year-old Jennifer is a pragmatist. She works in the health sector and has been politically active for a quarter of a century. But when it comes to the elections, she’s not looking for the most progressive candidate, but for someone who could make it. “We need someone to speak to the masses,” she explains in the white tent in Brooklyn. She doesn’t have her compatriots ready for someone like Sanders.
“Four years ago, 60 percent of the members of my union voted for Trump. Even in this democratic city. Today it is still 50 percent “
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Jennifer calls Trump’s politics “fascist”. But she has more nuanced views of its followers. Jennifer believes that many do not understand that he is taking advantage of their “ignorance”. The hard core of Trump’s supporters is as “misogynistic, racist and hypocritical” for Jennifer as he is himself either leave the country or die. “
Because she lives across town in the Bronx, Jennifer has to leave the tent before any meaningful election results come in. But she has long believed that Trump can win. And she figured out what that means for activists like her: “We have to do more work.”
Chris Townsend is the Organizing Director of the ATU Transportation Union. Regardless of whether Biden or Trump wins, he expects a “big settlement”. He accuses the Democrats of spending their time destroying the candidate Sanders. “They did it,” says Townsend. He found the Biden campaign devoid of content. “The soul of America,” he scoffs, “what is it when half the country is impoverished and when tens of millions can expect their homes to be evacuated.”
On the Sunday before election day, the long-established African American newspaper in Harlem, Amsterdam News, a gigantic bright red banner unrolled in front of its facade. Five words can be read on it in huge white letters across the full width of the building and at almost three floors. “Enough !!! Dump Trump – Vote 2020. “(Enough !!! Throw Trump out. Vote 2020). The name of the Democratic presidential candidate does not appear on it either.
But the New Yorkers heeded the invitation to vote. More than a million of them voted before the weekend. Often they had to wait three or four hours for this. On election day, this means that the polling stations across the city do not appear empty, but still seem manageably filled. Sometimes 10 or 15 people wait at the entrance only in the early morning.
“Only stragglers came today,” said an election worker at Harlem Public School 175 on Tuesday. She has so much free time that she can explain in detail to each voter the way to the gym, where there are several dozen portable polling desks and the scanners into which voters have to feed their large ballots.
The election results for New York City will be announced on Wednesday night. In Brooklyn Joe Biden has 74.1 percent, in Manhattan an impressive 84.4 percent, and in the whole of New York state it is 58.2 percent. Biden has won all 29 electors, as was expected.
But will that be enough?
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