US Politics

Subterms

    More stories

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Why Donald Trump won’t make major inroads with Black voters | Musa al-Gharbi

      by

      Throughout the 2024 cycle, polling has suggested that Republicans are poised to do extraordinarily well with African Americans.Even with Kamala Harris at the top of the ticket, nearly one out of five black voters say they support Donald Trump. Younger Black voters seem especially open to casting ballots for the Republican party.On its face, this seems like a sea change in Americans’ electoral affinities. The last time Republicans put up numbers anywhere near that level with Black voters was in 1976. And given that Black voters currently make up nearly one-quarter of the Democratic base, a scenario where almost 20% of these constituents defected to the other side would be absolutely devastating for the vice-president’s electoral prospects.The good news for Democrats is that, even if the polls have been genuinely capturing overall Black sentiment in the US, they are unlikely to be accurately predicting the final vote distribution in November.To clarify why polls are unlikely to reflect the eventual vote margins for this particular subset of voters, it might be helpful to look at how things typically shake out for third-party candidates.Elections are decided by voters, not poll respondentsDuring the 2016 electoral cycle, Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson consistently hovered around 9% of the vote in polling. As the race tightened in the weeks before the election, voters began defecting to one of the top ticket candidates. However, in the week before ballots were cast, he was still polling at more than 6%. Ultimately, he ended up with just over 3%.In the 2020 cycle, Green party candidate Howie Hawkins polled at 2% of the national vote six weeks before the election. He ultimately secured roughly one-quarter of 1% of ballots.In the current cycle, Robert F Kennedy Jr polled above 10% for most of the race and, at his high point, was more than double that. However, as the race has tightened (we’re less than 90 days out), and after Joe Biden dropped out, Kennedy is now polling around 4%. In the end, he’d probably be lucky to get half that many votes in November.In short: despite most Americans consistently expressing support for alternatives to the Democratic and Republican nominees, third-party candidates consistently underperform at the ballot box relative to their polling – even in cycles (like 2016) where unusually high numbers of voters dislike both major party candidates.One of the primary causes of this gap between polling and outcomes is that contests are ultimately decided by who shows up to vote on election day. And Americans who are disgusted with both major-party nominees often find other things to do on a Tuesday afternoon than standing in line at a polling place to cast a ballot for someone who has little prospect of actually winning. And when these voters do show up at the ballot box, it’s often to hold their nose and vote for whomever they perceive to be the lesser of the two major party evils, in order to deny victory to the candidate they least prefer. And so, in the end, few Americans who express support for third-party candidates in polls actually show up to vote for them. The polls may accurately capture Americans’ preferences for third-party candidates, but they don’t predict well voting behavior with respect to those candidates.A similar tale holds for Black support of Republicans.Although polls this cycle have consistently found that nearly one in five Black Americans are open to voting for Trump, they also show that most Black voters could be easily swayed to vote for someone other than who they’re leaning towards at the moment, most Black voters have much weaker commitments to their current candidate of choice than other Americans, and roughly a third say they will probably not vote at all. This pattern in responses is also reflected in historical voting behavior: Black voters are more likely than most other Americans to sit elections out.Across the board, the Americans who are most likely to show up on election day – highly-educated, relatively affluent, urban and suburban voters – now tend to favor Democrats, even as lower-propensity voters (younger, working class and low-income, and/or less educated Americans, especially those who live in small towns and rural areas) have been shifting to the right.Historically, the dynamic has gone the other way. Democrats benefitted from high turnout and sought to expand access and participation while Republicans aggressively sought to suppress turnout by increasing voting restrictions, purging voter rolls, gerrymandering districts and otherwise undermining the Voting Rights Act. However, as the Democratic party was reoriented around knowledge economy professionals, many other constituencies swung in the other direction. And because there are far more “normie” voters than there are symbolic capitalists, high turnout increasingly came to favor Republicans instead.This matters because Republicans’ polling gains among African Americans are concentrated most heavily among lower-propensity voting blocs (such as younger and less affluent or educated constituents) and, as a consequence, the lower overall electoral turnout is, the more we should expect to see Republicans underperform among black voters relative to the polls.In 2020, the GOP got a bigger share of the black vote than in previous cycles, but this was in part because of record turnout among non-white voters (whereas Democrats overperformed in subsequent special elections that had much lower overall turnout). Unfortunately for Trump, there are signs that African American turnout this cycle may be significantly lower among lower-propensity voters. Consequently, the vote share Republicans ultimately receive in 2024 among black voters may end up being significantly lower than the polling suggests.The bad news for Democrats is that Trump doesn’t necessarily need to get around 20% of the black vote to freeze Kamala out of the White House. If he’s to even marginally exceed his numbers from last cycle, Democrats would be left with a highly precarious path to victory unless they can make up the losses with other constituents in swing states.Both parties have been alienating core constituenciesSince 2010, Democrats had been consistently losing vote share among African Americans in every midterm and general election.And it wasn’t just African American voters who were leaving, but also Hispanic Americans, religious minorities, and less affluent or educated voters. The very populations that Democrats often fancy themselves as representatives of and advocates for. The very constituents that were supposed to ensure Democrats an indefinite electoral majority.These defections were highly consequential: they contributed to enormous congressional wipeouts from 2010 to 2014 and cost Democrats the White House in 2016 (as Black voter attrition helped flip states including Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Ohio, even as Hispanic alienation helped tilt Arizona, Texas and Florida toward the Republicans).Many assumed that with Trump in the White House, minority voters would come flocking back to the Democratic party. Instead, the GOP held their margins with non-white voters in the 2018 midterms. Democratic gains in that election were near-exclusively due to shifts among highly-educated, relatively affluent, urban and suburban white people.In 2020, Black voters in states such as South Carolina helped save Biden’s floundering primary election campaign. In response, the president vowed to appoint a Black woman as his running mate should he win the Democratic nomination. Upon securing the vote, he ultimately settled on Harris.This choice was striking because Harris was not popular with Black voters during the primary. She typically trailed behind not just Biden, but also Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and sometimes other competitors as well – consistently polling about 5% with African Americans.That general sentiment seems to have continued through to the general election. Although Harris’s nomination was historic in virtue of her being potentially the first Black, female and/or Asian vice-president, her appearance on the ticket generated little enthusiasm among any of these voter blocs. Democrats ultimately got a smaller share of the black vote and the Asian vote in 2020 as compared with 2016 (across gender lines). Democrats were able to nonetheless carve out a narrow electoral college win primarily because white men (especially self-identified “moderates” and “independents”) shifted away from Donald Trump in 2020.These patterns continued through the 2022 midterm elections: non-white people, including non-white women, shifted much further towards the GOP than white people (especially white men). And it seems likely that Democrats will see further attrition in 2024, even if it’s less than current polling suggests.Contrary to optimistic narratives that circulated as Obama was ushered into office, it’s actually quite difficult to hold together a coalition that is centered around knowledge economy professionals but attractive to less advantaged Americans as well.With respect to the Democratic party’s current core constituency, although knowledge economy professionals have been straying from the Democrats since the election of Biden, they seem poised to turn out in force for Harris. The record-breaking “White Women: Answer the Call” and “White Dudes for Harris” online events seem like a strong indicator – as does the huge outpouring of support from Wall Street, Silicon Valley and big law. The symbolic professions seem to be 100% coconut-pilled.Black people, on the other hand, seem much less enthusiastic. And should Harris lean heavily into her race or gender in an attempt to rally support – although this might be appealing to (disproportionately white) knowledge economy professionals – it would likely alienate non-white “normie” voters even more (who tend to prefer messages that are less identitarian and more focused on bread and butter issues).The big question for 2024 is whether or not Trump will continue to alienate white people at an equal or greater clip as Democrats are driving away voters of color. The answer will likely determine control of the White House.

      Musa al-Gharbi is a sociologist in the School of Communication and Journalism at Stony Brook University. His book, We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite, is forthcoming with Princeton University Press. He is a Guardian US columnist. More

    • 175 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Fifty years after Nixon resigned, a key player is still angry about his pardon

      by

      A sombre US president addresses the nation from the Oval Office. Despite all he has achieved, he will relinquish power and pass the torch to his vice-president. It is clear that he is bowing to pressure from his own party and leaving against his will.This was Joe Biden in 2024. It was also Richard Nixon in very different circumstances 50 years ago on Thursday. Disgraced by the Watergate break-in and cover-up, Nixon would claim an unwanted place in history as the first – and still only – person to resign the American presidency.For Elizabeth Holtzman, who at the time was the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, it was a day of hope – an affirmation of America’s system of checks and balances holding Nixon to account for his role in the Watergate scandal. But her optimism did not last long. A month later, Nixon was granted a full pardon by his successor, Gerald Ford.“The pardon was unpardonable,” Holtzman, who turns 83 this week, says by phone from her home in Brooklyn, New York. “The pardon created a double standard of justice: one for the high and mighty in this country and another for everybody else.”Half a century later, she still suspects that Ford’s motives were less noble than are often portrayed and worries that he set a dangerous precedent for the likes of Donald Trump. But as she reflects on a long career as a trailblazer, Holtzman is optimistic about the potential for America to elect its first female president in November.She was a 31-year-old Harvard Law School graduate when, in 1972, she beat a five-decade incumbent, Emanuel Celler, to win a Brooklyn, New York, seat in the House of Representatives. Foreshadowing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Holtzman took to the streets and out-campaigned her better-known opponent, making her case to voters at every subway station in her district and queues outside cinemas showing The Godfather.The summer of 1972 had also seen the arrest of five men in a bungled operation to bug and steal documents from the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate building in Washington – a dirty tricks scheme aimed at scuppering would-be challengers to Nixon in that year’s presidential election.Nixon and his aides attempted to cover up the White House’s involvement in the break-in and obstructed the investigation by law enforcement agencies. Journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post played a key role in uncovering the story with the help of a secret informant known as “Deep Throat” (later revealed to be the FBI associate director Mark Felt).View image in fullscreenThe Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Senate Watergate committee and a special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, also investigated the scandal. It emerged that Nixon had a secret taping system in the Oval Office that recorded conversations. In 1974, after a long legal battle, the US supreme court ordered Nixon to release the tapes that contained evidence he had been involved in the cover-up from the beginning.Holtzman was one of the House judiciary committee members who recommended articles of impeachment against the president. She recalls: “The evidence was overwhelming. At some point I remember feeling as though I was in quicksand with no bottom, that we just kept hearing one fact of criminality, misconduct, abuse of power after another, and we just kept sinking further and further into that muck.”The gravity of the moment was profound. This would be only the second impeachment of a president in American history, following that of Andrew Johnson in 1868. Holtzman, who five years ago published the book The Case for Impeaching Trump, reflects: “Nobody was happy on the Democratic side or Republican side in voting for the impeachment of Richard Nixon.“It’s well known that the chair of the committee, Peter Rodino, a very liberal Democrat, went back to his office and cried after that first vote for impeachment. Nobody wanted to see it and I felt also very uncomfortable. It was a very difficult vote to cast.“Not that I had any questions about Nixon’s guilt or whether he should be impeached. It was obvious that the impeachment clause was written almost with Nixon in mind by the framers of the constitution. But that wasn’t the point. The point is that he was my president and I didn’t want to see any US president involved in this kind of misconduct, this degree and level and horror of abuse of power and criminality.”She adds: “I didn’t want to see it and it was awful to see and it was a very sobering moment. Nobody took any pleasure. This was not a gotcha! moment for Democrats. That’s the difference between then and now. People took impeachment seriously.”At first many Republicans had remained loyal to Nixon, denying that he was personally involved despite mounting evidence. But the “smoking gun tape” confirmed the allegation of the White House counsel, John Dean, that Nixon told aides to order the CIA to shut down the FBI investigation into the burglary.Holtzman adds: “That was a key part of the cover-up. The Republicans could no longer argue that there was no evidence that Nixon was oblivious to what was going on. Nixon was ordering the cover-up almost from day one.“At that point, all the what I call the ‘holdout Republicans’ said that they would support impeachment if it came to the House floor. In the end, the Republicans themselves were governed by the facts, although up to that point they would not accept anything less than a tape recording.”Three Republican leaders went to the White House to warn Nixon that there were no longer enough Republican votes to spare him impeachment. The following night, as crowds outside the White House gates chanted “jail to the chief”, Nixon announced his resignation in a nationally televised speech from the Oval Office that focused on the accomplishments of his presidency and contained no admission of guilt.On the morning of 9 August, a sweaty Nixon delivered an extemporaneous, grievance-filled speech to White House staff, some of whom broke down in tears. He said: “Always remember, others may hate you – but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.” The remark has been described by Woodward as “one of the most interesting and important moments in presidential history”.But Holtzman was unmoved. “This was not a Shakespearean tragedy for me. This was a man who seriously abused his power, fought his political enemies. For a man to say treat your enemies well, he’d stick the IRS on his political enemies to try to get them to have harassing audits. This is a man who wiretapped journalists he thought were leaking information.“This is a man who went after Daniel Ellsberg [the defence analyst who leaked the secret history of the Vietnam war known as the Pentagon Papers] by approving a break-in into his psychiatrist’s office. He never acknowledged his guilt. He never showed remorse. Saying you shouldn’t do something, that’s very nice to preach to others, but what about practising what you preach? That we didn’t see and we never had any acknowledgment of his flaws ever.”View image in fullscreenNixon gave a final victory sign on the White House South Lawn before a helicopter spirited him away. On taking the oath of office as the 38th president, Ford remarked that America’s “long national nightmare is over”. Weeks later, he granted a full and unconditional pardon to Nixon. Bernstein exclaimed to Woodward: “You’re not gonna believe it. The son of a bitch pardoned the son of a bitch!”Holtzman was incensed. At a hearing of the House judiciary committee, she questioned Ford about the pardon directly. The president insisted that a criminal indictment, trial and conviction would have diverted the attention of the White House, Congress and American people from the urgent problems they needed to solve at home and abroad.Fifty years later, Holtzman is still convinced that Ford got it wrong. “We did something at the House judiciary committee to hold the president accountable and set forth the basis for his accountability on a bipartisan basis and in a process that the public would understand.“Here you had a president who had said, ‘I’m not going to do anything right away’ but basically he acted within a month of the resignation, and where was the transparency? What were the grounds for this? Why would you do this? Let the system work.”The criminal justice system should not have been tampered with, she continues. “The special prosecutor should have been allowed to examine all the evidence to determine whether on a criminal basis it was justified to bring charges to the grand jury, to let the grand jury make its determination to bring the prosecution, to bring a trial if that was warranted, to see whether there would be a conviction.“To short-circuit the process was a gross political act and an abuse of power and raised the question which to this day has never been solved as to whether the pardon was part of a deal to get Nixon out of office to help the Republicans in the midterm elections. Do I know that was Ford’s motive? It could have been. It was obviously a potential motive for him.”Trump, facing federal criminal charges over his role in the 6 January 2021 insurrection, has floated the idea of pardoning himself as well as his supporters who attacked police and stormed the US Capitol. Holtzman says: “The blatant use of the pardon power in a political way is wrong.“It’s an abuse of power and shouldn’t happen, and a lot of thought has to be given to reforming how the pardon power is being used, because for Donald Trump to say that he’s going to pardon the people who attacked the Capitol on January 6 is beyond reprehensible.”She also rejects that notion that a Democratic president should consider pardoning Trump. “Pardons don’t create national unity. There was no serious division among the American people about the Nixon impeachment. It was overwhelmingly approved by the American people.“The idea that the country had to be brought together because Nixon was being removed from office is nonsense. The American people came together because they realised that more important than any president, whether Republican or Democrat, was preserving our constitution and the rule of law. We came together on that principle, not on the principle of a particular person.”View image in fullscreenFord went on to lose the 1976 election to the Democrat Jimmy Carter. “Ford was kicked out of office. He was not re-elected because of the pardon so how did that unify anybody? The pardon appeared to have been used to my mind as a blatant political means to get Nixon out of office.”Holtzman spent eight years in Congress, leading efforts to bring Nazi war criminals living in America to justice, and went on to serve as Brooklyn district attorney. But she has suffered her share of setbacks, coming within a percentage point of being New York’s first female senator in 1980, losing a Senate primary election in 1992 and being defeated after one term as New York City comptroller in a banking-related scandal.Her record as the youngest woman elected to Congress eventually fell in 2014 to a then 30-year-old Republican named Elise Stefanik. Two years ago Holtzman made an unsuccessful bid to return to the House in a newly drawn congressional district spanning parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan.But Biden’s withdrawal from this year’s White House race in favor of Kamala Harris raises the prospect that she may see a woman occupy the Oval Office in her lifetime. She muses: “More and more women are holding more and more important offices in this country, and slowly but surely the American people are recognizing that women can do a great job and some women can do a terrible job, just the way men can do a great job and some men can do a terrible job.“To exclude women from the presidency because they’re women is wrong, it’s bias, it’s depriving us of great talent. I feel very optimistic about Vice-President Harris’s campaign and about her possibility of success and it would be a great thing for this country. It’s another way that we could be a beacon in this world.” More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Far-right online attacks against Tim Walz focus on conspiracy theory

      by

      Just as he was officially announced on the ticket, Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, often lauded as the safest pick for Kamala Harris to make as a running mate, was already facing racist and nativist attacks from the online depths of the far right.In media speculation leading up to Harris’s potential pick, Walz, a midwesterner who once coached a high school football team, was seen as evening out the Californian vice-president’s candidacy for the White House.The thinking among pundits was that Walz, who is white and 60, was appealing to battleground states, namely Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – one of the keys to victory in the electoral college spread this November.But the far-right users of Telegram, Gab, 4chan and other adjacent social media sites frequently used to spread extremist propaganda have taken a different tack.The nexus of many of the early attacks have focused on the conspiracy theory that he changed the state flag of Minnesota to mimic a Somali flag.“Replaced Minnesota flag with Somali flag, loves loves loves Somalis moving into America by planeload,” said one anonymous post on the chatboard 4Chan, with an image of Walz at a press conference.“Timmy Somali changed the state flag to look African, lmao,” said another post on the same site, which was published following the news of Walz as Harris’s pick. “Dude is a fucking cuck. This is a worse VP pick than even Vance was.”This rhetoric stems from Walz unveiling the new Minnesota flag in December last year. The 1957 version was criticized for overtly depicting a Native American man being driven away from the land by threat of a rifle. The new design partly features a blue backdrop with a white star – an allusion to the official state motto “Star of the North” – something the Somali flag also happens to include.“Tim Walz is the perfect pick to sell you out to the hordes,” wrote one pro-Proud Boys channel on Telegram with more than 15,000 followers, putting a video of Walz and the new flag in the post.As the brutal civil war persisted into the 90s, Minnesota became a destination for many Somali immigrants, who established a rich and successful group of new Americans. Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar, who was born in Mogadishu, was part of that same wave of immigration fleeing the violence.But, of course, the more than 85,000 Somali Americans in the state of close to 7 million has become the racist fodder of neo-Nazis, nativists and far-right commentators of all types in recent years.“This is Minneapolis, Minnesota,” read one post with more than a thousand views on a neo-Nazi-sympathizing channel on Telegram, with photos of a vibrant Somali street festival in Minneapolis, not unlike annual Italian street festivals in every major US city. “This isn’t Mogadishu.”Mainstream Republicans have started adopting this racist invocation of Somalia when it comes to Walz. Stephen Miller, former senior adviser to Donald Trump, went on Fox News on Tuesday night to say the Democrat ticket will “turn the entire midwest into Mogadishu”.On Gab, a fringe and rightwing X-wannabe, an image showing a cartoon Harris and Walz carrying a Somali flag was making the rounds, while others largely focused on the Minnesota governor’s stewardship of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests in 2020, which first began in his state after the police killing of George Floyd.“Minneapolis before and after Governor Tim Walz allowed BLM to destroy it,” wrote one Gab user posting images claiming to show Minneapolis buildings that were once pristine before the protests.Walz’s midwestern, folksy appeal was undeniably a major reason Harris and her team took the decision to include him. He’s a counter to Donald Trump’s running mate: the Ohio senator JD Vance, who uses any public appearance to stress his working-class and Appalachian roots.Vance and the far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is an often antisemitic and racist mouthpiece for the extremist branches of the Republican party, immediately cited the BLM protests in their attacks on Walz.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionVance accused Walz of allowing “rioters to burn down Minneapolis” while Greene said he similarly did “nothing while Minneapolis burned”, telegraphing a surefire Republican attack line in the coming months.“The incoming rightwing assault on Walz will be pretty predictable,” said Amarnath Amarasingam, an extremism expert and professor at Queen’s University in Canada who has researched the rise of the far right since the Trump presidency.Amarasingam explained that there was the underlying racial component to Walz’s candidacy that was sure to inflame the far right and be an implicit attack against him in mainstream Republican circles.“American politics is so tribal now that the same reasons that make [Walz] attractive to the Harris campaign will be the same reasons he will be considered ‘un-American’ by the right.”Amarasingam also pointed out that beyond his track record on Covid, LGBTQ+ and trans rights will surely be topics of conversation.“The predictable culture war fault lines – immigration, equity, gender fluidity, race – will be trotted out as insults and accusations: he took too long to call in the national guard against BLM protests, his state was too restrictive during Covid and so on,” he said.“When there aren’t verifiable policy choices to attack, conspiracy theories will take their place – like the idea that he changed the state’s flag to resemble the Somali flag due to an immigrant takeover.”Another point of criticism on Walz that’s gaining momentum among Republicans is … tampons? Walz supported a law that went into effect in Minnesota this year, requiring tampons in both boys and girls public school bathrooms.The perhaps uninspired hashtag “TamponTim” trended on X among rightwing circles for most of Tuesday. On Gab, there’s a meme dubbing Walz “Tampon Tim” and shows a manipulated picture of him menstruating from his jeans.Karoline Leavitt, a Trump campaign spokesperson, wasted no time appearing on Fox News only hours after Walz was announced to criticize the vice-presidential pick and his legislative track record.“As a woman, I think there’s no greater threat to our health than leaders who support gender transition surgeries for young minors,” she said in an animated appearance, “who support putting tampons in men’s bathrooms in public schools.” More

    • 175 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘We invest in artists as changemakers’: using art to help increase US voter participation

      by

      Everything is politics, so the saying goes, and never more so during an election year. With its newest collection, Art for Change is taking the “everything” one step further.Since 2018, Art for Change has curated programs of online sales and exhibitions to raise money for a number of charities. Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Art for Change has partnered with When We All Vote, a non-partisan non-profit founded by Michelle Obama that seeks to up voter participation.On their own, many of the pieces in this collection may not feel overtly political. An art novice would probably imagine a collaboration like this to include art similar to the red, white and blue of Shepard Fairey’s Hope and We The People posters – not Jordan Kasey’s surreal illustration of a baby and mother, Daniel Gordon’s still life of red apples and white poppies, or Aaron Johnson’s vivid auroral depiction of a couple with a bird flying from one’s heart.But interspersed with pieces like Caris Reid’s playful rendering of the word “VOTE” against a starry backdrop and Rico Gatson’s colorful celebration of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress, each piece in this collection takes on new context. Especially under the mission statement of When We All Vote, which will receive a portion of all the sales of prints and original works, the artwork of this collection come together to show what’s at stake with each election – what exactly a person risks losing by choosing not to vote.“The When We All Vote collection as a whole creates a narrative that we hope evokes various nuances of America,” said Jeanne Masel, founder of Art for Change. “As a group, they convey a sense of Americana, from the image of an apple to a whimsical take on a ‘Vote’ poster, to abstractions that evoke raw emotions.”Masel added: “What I love about this collection is how varied and multivalent it is, which I think can also be read as reflecting our country’s diversity.”Johnson completed Oh My Heart in 2023 and had not originally intended for it to convey a political message. “My piece can be looked at as kind of a love story,” he said. “It’s a coming together of two figures, melded together into like a non-duality.”As part of this collection, the love story of Oh My Heart comes to represent the ties that hold us together. “In a lot of times in my work, I’m thinking about the interconnectedness of all beings, our interconnectivity with each other as humans or interconnectivity with nature,” Johnson said. “I think that all wraps back around to the idea of community and the idea of why of it’s important to vote, having empathy for others and having a sense of a shared community. I feel like that’s a message that runs kind of kind of parallel to what we’re looking for when we’re going to vote. How do we function together as good citizens? How do we take care of each other as citizens?”View image in fullscreenLike Johnson, Kenny Rivero’s body of work, which looks at architecture and outdoor street space as sentient observers of our daily lives, does not always translate into something political. But once he agreed to work with Art for Change for this collaboration, he thought of Witness Revelator, a painting he finished in 2020 of a Black individual emerging from a dark rectangular portal in a gray brick wall. The witness in Witness Revelator is “a witness to your vote”, Rivero said.“There’s a lot of things that we do alone, that we do intimately and in private and in secret, and I think voting is one of those things, especially now where everything is so polarized,” he said. “There’s this thing you’re doing that is private but you’re being tallied in something greater, something much more impactful. Witness Revelator, for me, is connected to that in the way of somebody witnessing the effort that you’re making to create progress or create change.”Since its start six years ago, Art for Change has raised more than $300,000 for nonprofit partners and has collaborated with more than 100 artists, all of whom are guaranteed 50% of the profits from sales. Masel describes Art for Change as “art for the socially conscious collector”, but also a way for artists to have a platform for social change. “We invest in artists as changemakers,” she said.View image in fullscreenThis collection is the second time Rivero has worked with Art for Change, in part because he said he believes that artists have a unique role in a democracy, no matter the subject matter or intended message of their work.“I think that artists are on the frontlines of creating new ideas on how to relate to each other,” Rivero said. “Because we’re constantly engaging with these ideas around family, community and relationships, so I think that we look to artists, not necessarily on how to rebuild society, but to tell us what’s wrong with it. Where does it hurt?”Art for Change collaborated with When We All Vote for the 2020 election, working with four artists to raise more than $30,000 for the non-profit. This year, 14 artists are participating, with Art for Change pledging to donate a guaranteed $10,000.“A visual medium has the power to drive social change and impact, and having these artists involved and spreading the word to get out and vote is so important,” Masel said. “This project really harnesses a great creativity and joy to inspire change.”

      The When We All Vote virtual exhibit is now available on the Art for Change website More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      JD Vance attacks Tim Walz’s military record as election race heats up

      by

      JD Vance went on the offensive on Wednesday, attacking the military record of Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s vice-presidential pick.Speaking in Michigan, Donald Trump’s Republican running mate said: “You know what really bothers me about Tim Walz? When the United States Marine Corps … asked me to go to Iraq to serve my country, I did it. I did what they asked me to do and I did it honorably, and I’m very proud of that service.“When Tim Walz was asked by his country to go to Iraq, you know what he did? He dropped out of the army and allowed his unit to go without him.”Now a US senator from Ohio, Vance, 40, deployed to Iraq in 2005, as a military journalist. Despite his title – combat correspondent – he did not experience combat.Walz, 60, was in the army national guard for 24 years, in infantry and artillery, deploying in response to natural disasters on US soil and to Europe in support of operations in Afghanistan. He retired in 2005, to run for Congress, shortly before his unit deployed to Iraq.He has faced attacks before. In 2018, he told Minnesota Public Radio: “I know that there are certainly folks that did far more than I did. I know that. I willingly say that I got far more out of the military than they got out of me, from the GI bill to leadership opportunities to everything else.”A soldier who served under Walz, Al Bonnifield, said: “Would the soldier look down on him because he didn’t go with us? Would the common soldier say, ‘Hey, he didn’t go with us, he’s trying to skip out on a deployment?’ And he wasn’t.“… He weighed that decision to run for Congress very heavy. He loved the military, he loved the guard, he loved the soldiers he worked with.”Calling Walz “very caring” and a “very good leader”, Bonnifield said Walz helped him and other soldiers when they returned from Iraq.Vance seized on footage publicized by the Harris campaign in which, discussing gun control reform, Walz says: “We can make sure that those weapons of war that I carried in war is the only place where those weapons are at.”Vance said: “He says, ‘We shouldn’t allow weapons that I used in war to be on the American streets.’skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Well, I wonder, Tim Walz, when were you ever in war? What was this weapon that you carried into war given that you abandoned your unit right before they went to Iraq? He has not spent a day in a combat zone. What bothers me about Tim Walz is the stolen valor garbage. Do not pretend to be something that you’re not.”Observers suggested Vance was attempting to “swift boat” Walz – a reference to attacks on John Kerry, the decorated US navy Vietnam veteran and Massachusetts senator who ran for president against George W Bush in 2004.Bush avoided serving in Vietnam but Republicans attacked Kerry regardless. The Republican operative (and wounded Gulf war veteran) widely credited with coordinating the effort, Chris LaCivita, now runs the Trump-Vance campaign.In a statement, the Harris campaign said: “After 24 years of military service, Governor Walz retired in 2005 and ran for Congress, where he chaired veterans affairs and was a tireless advocate for our men and women in uniform … As vice-president … he will continue to be a relentless champion for our veterans and military families.”It added: “In his 24 years of service, the Governor carried, fired and trained others to use weapons of war innumerable times. Governor Walz would never insult or undermine any American’s service to this country – in fact, he thanks Senator Vance for putting his life on the line for our country. It’s the American way.” More

    • 175 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden ‘not confident at all’ in peaceful transfer of power if Trump loses race

      by

      Joe Biden has said he is not confident there will be a peaceful transfer of power after the November presidential election.“If Trump wins, no, I’m not confident at all. I mean, if Trump loses, I’m not confident at all,” the president said in an interview with CBS News that is due to air in full this Sunday.Biden added: “He means what he says, we don’t take him seriously. He means it, all this stuff about ‘if we lose it will be a bloodbath’ … [and] ‘stolen election’, you can’t love your country only when you win.”The TV network posted the excerpt from the interview on Twitter/X.Donald Trump, who is the Republican nominee for president, said in March: “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s gonna be a bloodbath. That’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion

      Reuters contributed reporting. More details soon … More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Illinois governor calls for resignation of sheriff whose deputy killed Sonya Massey

      by

      JB Pritzker, Illinois governor, has called for the resignation of the sheriff whose deputy fatally shot Sonya Massey in her home last month after the Black woman had called 911 for help.Pritzker, a Democrat, said on Wednesday that the sheriff, Jack Campbell, should step down.“He has failed to explain how he ended up hiring this deputy sheriff who has been fired from other departments,” Pritzker said. “He failed to put forward reforms that clearly need to be made – training and other reforms – and still has failed to meet with the Massey family.”The former sheriff’s deputy, Sean Grayson, who has since been fired, faces three counts of first-degree murder, aggravated battery with a firearm and official misconduct in the 6 July shooting death of Massey.Records have shown that prior to becoming a law enforcement officer, Grayson was kicked out of the army for the first of two drunken driving arrests within a year. Campbell had been aware of Grayson’s drunk driving convictions, though he has said that a record of DUI does not disqualify a candidate.During Grayson’s law enforcement career, he received some reviews that indicated he needed more training and had one disciplinary problem. A psychological evaluation from March 2023 found him fit to serve but noted: “He knows he can move too fast at times. He needs to slow down to make good decisions.”Campbell, who hired Grayson for the Sangamon county sheriff’s department in May 2023, reiterated his intent on Wednesday to stay in the job.“I was overwhelmingly elected to lead the sheriff’s office through both good times and bad,” Campbell said. “I am fully prepared to continue leading my office and serving the residents of Sangamon county through this difficult period, ensuring we learn from this tragedy and work toward a better future.”Pritzker met with Massey’s family two weeks ago, alongside the lieutenant governor, Juliana Stratton, and has faulted Campbell for not meeting with Massey’s family members.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionCampbell has said that he has requested meetings with the family four times through family-designated intermediaries, but none have been accepted, and that he would still like to meet.Joe Biden, the US president, and his vice-president, Kamala Harris, have both reiterated calls for policing reforms following the killing.The Associated Press contributed reporting More