The wave of rallies for racial justice that swept America this summer arrived in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, with dueling marches in support of Black Lives Matter and of law enforcement – and dueling online petitions to “defund the police” and “defend the police”.
Then the local police chief, Mark DiLuzio, shared a racist post on Facebook – not realizing at the time, DiLuzio later said, that the image he shared had objectionable language attached. The post attacked LeBron James and other basketball players for striking to protest police violence against people of color, calling the players “anti-white” and “spoiled little brats”.
In the outcry that followed, DiLuzio apologized and resigned. But the episode laid bare just the kind of local tensions that Donald Trump’s “law-and-order” re-election campaign seems determined to appeal to – and to exacerbate, the president’s critics say.
In less than eight weeks, voters in the Bethlehem area will endorse or reject Trump’s message. And which option they choose could have national, even global, repercussions. The surrounding Northampton county is one of only three counties in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania to have voted for Trump in 2016 after voting twice for Barack Obama.
If Northampton flips back to the Democratic column in November, the state of Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes could flip with it, putting Biden on the road to the White House. But if Trump’s law-and-order pitch lands here, Northampton could help deliver Trump four more years.
“I think the majority of Northampton county voters are very smart and informed, and they can see right through” Trump’s law-and-order pitch, said city councilperson Paige Van Wirt, a Democrat. “They can see that peaceful protests are very different from looters and rioters. And we’ve been able to have both in Bethlehem because we are a peaceful place.”
But that’s not the view along all of Main Street, where Joe D’Ambrosio has been cutting hair since the Kennedy era.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
